Vehicle Routing of Special Urban Transport Service

Abstract

Special Urban Transport Service (SUTS) is used by people in wheelchairs, those who use crutches, temporarily or permanently disabled including people with reduced mobility or elderly persons. These passengers need specific conditions for their transportation. That causes higher operation costs of SUTS due to a lot of factors: special modified vehicles, special way and time of reservation process (through a dispatcher), individual mode of transport (door-to-door), time-limited operation or reduced ticket price for passengers. One important aspect that affects operating efficiency of SUTS is coefficient of vehicle occupancy and related route scheduling. The paper is focused on optimisation of vehicle routes and its impact on total operation costs of SUTS. Method of exhaustive search for vehicle routing optimisation is described in this paper as well as the model for evaluation of total operation costs. Economic and technological data of SUTS from the year 2017 are used as input data for optimisation. Outputs of optimisation are compared to the situation in SUTS Pardubice (2017).