Abstract
To increase the utilization of existing resources, vehicle- and ride-sharing systems have been introduced as an efficient door-to-door service. To leverage the sharing concept, these systems have been combined as an integrated sharing transport system (ISTS) such that existing vehicles and services in the transport system are highly utilized. To operate ISTS efficiently, this study aims to introduce and formulate the optimal vehicle routing problem, which can simultaneously support vehicle- and ride-sharing features, and to provide the optimal solution that satisfies all users' activity patterns. As ISTS may degrade users' satisfaction because of discomfort, user preference is incorporated into the optimization model. With the developed model, the importance of considered factors, such as user preference, can be adjusted according to specified policies. The optimal solutions of several policies are compared and discussed using numerical experiments. Moreover, the equality operation policy, which equally considers user preference and system efficiency, is presented.
