Choice-driven service network design for an integrated fixed line and demand responsive mobility system

Sparsely populated areas tend to be poorly served by Fixed Line and Schedule (FLS) public transport systems as the operation of a regular bus line is not economically viable for such areas. Therefore, introducing a Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) to partially replace FLS can result in increasing mobility service accessibility and inclusion. In this paper, a mixed-integer linear problem (MILP) is proposed to design an integrated FLS and DRT network for a transport operator. Passengers behavior is implicitly incorporated in our proposed approach via a discrete choice model. In addition, a tailored Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search (ALNS) coupled with tabu search and simulated annealing are introduced. We test our algorithm on real instances from a public transport operator in the Netherlands. The proposed algorithm can solve the problem up to 170 times faster than the MILP within 4% to 10% gap. Our proposed resolution approach investigates the temporal and spatial feasibility of deploying these integrated mobility systems based on the service level and provides recommendations to public transport operators.