Designing High-Freedom Responsive Feeder Transit System with Multitype Vehicles

The last mile travelling problem is the most challenging part when using public transit. This study designs a high-freedom responsive feeder transit (HFRFT) system to serve at the transfer station, given vehicle routes, departure time, and service area based on demand. The proposed feeder transit system employs a travelling mode with multitype vehicles. In order to improve the operation of the HFRFT system, the optimization design methods are suggested for vehicle routes, scheduling, and service area. A mixed integer programming model and its hybrid of a metaheuristic algorithm are proposed to efficiently and integrally solve the vehicle routes and scheduling parameters according to the reservation requirements. A heuristic method is proposed to optimize the service area based on the equilibrium of system supply and demand. Case studies show that the mixed running mode of multiple models can significantly improve the seat utilization, which can also significantly reduce the number of departures and the average travel distance per passenger. The proposed service area optimization method is proved to be feasible to improve the last mile travel.