Mobility Allowance Shuttle Transit (MAST) Services: Formulation and Simulation Comparison with Conventional Fixed Route Bus Services

L. Quadrifoglio and M.M. Dessouky (USA)

Keywords

Transit, Simulation, Heuristic, Pickup and Delivery

Abstract

The Mobility Allowance Shuttle Transit (MAST) system is an innovative concept that merges the flexibility of Demand Responsive Transit (DRT) systems with the low cost operability of fixed-route bus systems. A MAST service has a fixed base route that covers a specific geographic zone, with one or more mandatory checkpoints; the innovative twist is that, given an appropriate slack time, buses are allowed to deviate from the fixed path to pick up and drop off passengers at their desired locations within a predetermined service area. In this paper we present a mixed integer programming formulation of MAST services and we compare its performance with a conventional fixed-route bus service by a simulation analysis.

Important Links:



Go Back