Development of a demand responsive transport system with improvement analysis on conventional public transport: A case study for Schorndorf, Germany

Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) is a passenger-oriented branch of public transport, which consists of a group of passengers sharing a vehicle with flexible pick-up and drop-off locations and times. However, DRT systems are most of the time economically unfeasible, due to their difficulties on balancing costs and demand. The optimization problem associated with this kind of systems is known as the Dial-a-Ride problem. The purpose of this work is the development of a DRT system which solves this problem making use of an Ant Colony Optimization algorithm. A simulator provided with an evaluation tool analyzes the viability of the implementation of this system for the city of Schorndorf (40.000 inhabitants) in Germany. For its evaluation, the proposed system has been compared to the already existing conventional public transport system in this city, analyzing different parameters related to quality of service and required efforts.