To improve the reliability, responsiveness, and productivity of the flex-route transit service, this paper investigates the vehicle scheduling and routing problem under a dynamic operating environment. First, we discuss the new operating polices after the introduction of intelligent transportation systems (ITSs), including automatic vehicle location (AVL) system, mobile data terminal (MDT), and computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system. Second, a mixed integer programming (MIP) formulation is employed to solve the offline routing problem. Third, an online scheduling scheme is presented to tackle different dynamic events, such as dynamic requests, travel time fluctuations, cancellations of requests, and customer no-shows. Finally, simulation experiments based on a real-life flex-route transit service are conducted to assess the influence of different dynamic events. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheduling scheme is reliable for coping with various dynamic events, and our findings can be used to guide the policy making of flex-route transit services.

中文翻译：

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动态运行环境下柔性路径公交的车辆路径与调度

为了提高弹性路径公交服务的可靠性，响应速度和生产率，本文研究了动态运行环境下的车辆调度和路径选择问题。首先，我们在引入智能交通系统（ITS）之后讨论新的操作策略，包括自动车辆定位（AVL）系统，移动数据终端（MDT）和计算机辅助调度（CAD）系统。其次，采用混合整数规划（MIP）公式来解决离线路由问题。第三，提出了一种在线调度方案来处理不同的动态事件，例如动态请求，旅行时间波动，请求取消和客户未入住。最后，进行了基于现实生活中的灵活路线运输服务的仿真实验，以评估不同动态事件的影响。结果表明，所提出的调度方案对于应对各种动态事件是可靠的，我们的发现可用于指导弹性路由中转服务的决策。