Simulation and optimization of one-way car-sharing systems with variant relocation policies

Car-sharing is a transportation service consisting of vehicles distributed over an urban area that any driver registered to the system can use. This paper focuses on one-way electric car-sharing systems. The success of such systems relies strongly on operations management and attractive rental conditions. Immediate availability and possibility of reservation in advance are key points. This induces strong constraints for the operator especially when some stations attract more trips as a destination than as an origin and vice versa. These imbalances must be corrected by performing vehicle relocations in a smart way to maximize vehicle availability and minimize operator’s costs. In order to understand the demand patterns and explore relocation possibilities, an event-based simulator is built in C#. The authors develop a new relocation strategy to minimize the demand loss due to vehicle unavailability. Implemented in parallel to rentals, it relies on the regular update of the relocation plans based on an optimization framework which utilizes the current state of the system and partial knowledge of near-future demand. This strategy is compared to three other strategies on a case study based on real data from Nice, France. They show that it maximizes the number of served demand and succeeds in keeping the system in a balanced state contrary to the other strategies considered.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP020 Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies. Alternate title: Simulation and Optimization of One-Way Carsharing Systems with Variant Relocation Policies.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Repoux, Martin
  • Boyaci, Burak
  • Geroliminis, Nikolas
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 19p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Case studies; Electric automobiles; Fleet management; Operations; Rental cars; Travel demand; Vehicle fleets; Vehicle sharing
• Geographic Terms: Nice (France)
• Subject Areas: Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Public Transportation; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01551101
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-1907
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 27 2015 11:21AM