Modular Vehicle-Based Transit System For Combined Passenger And Freight Transportation

Abstract

<p>Modular vehicles consist of a number of identical modular units and are capable of adjusting vehicle capacity by docking and undocking modular units en route to accommodate fluctuating transport needs. This paper investigates the planning problem of a modular transit system, where modular vehicles are used to serve both passenger and freight demand along a two-way transit corridor. We optimize the dispatch headway of modular vehicles along with vehicle formation at each transit station, while explicitly accounting for modular unit balance at transit stations. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming problem. To solve the problem of practical scale, a two-stage algorithm is proposed, where the dispatch headway in both directions is determined in the first stage, and vehicle formation and freight allocation are solved in the second stage. Numerical experiments have demonstrated the effectiveness of the two-stage algorithm. It is also verified that the adoption of modular vehicles significantly enhances the overall transport efficiency.</p>