Shared-Vehicle Mobility-on-Demand Systems: A Fleet Operator's Guide to Rebalancing Empty Vehicles

The authors consider the operation of automated mobility-on-demand systems, whereby users share access to a fleet of self-driving vehicles. In these systems, rebalancing, the process by which the supply of empty vehicles is periodically realigned with the demand for transport, is carried out by a fleet operator. Where much of the rebalancing literature skews to the theoretical or simulation-based, the authors consider shared mobility systems from the perspective of the fleet operator. The authors test, via simulations, how key performance metrics vary as a function of fleet size and rebalancing policy using rental data from car2go, a free-floating carsharing service operating in markets across Europe and North America. Results reveal that rebalancing can dramatically reduce the number of customer walk aways, even for relatively small fleet sizes. A framework is provided to assess what fleet size is a appropriate for a city factoring in the cost of vehicles, customer walk aways, and the added expense of moving empty vehicles.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • When this paper is published in the Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board (TRR) the DOI will be 10.3141/2542-14. This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AP020 Standing Committee on Emerging and Innovative Public Transport and Technologies.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Spieser, Kevin
  • Samaranayake, Samitha
  • Gruel, Wolfgang
  • Frazzoli, Emilio
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References;
• Pagination: 15p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Demand responsive transportation; Fleet management; Intelligent vehicles; Simulation; Vehicle fleets; Vehicle sharing
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01595733
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-5987
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Apr 5 2016 12:30PM