Alternative approaches to demand responsive scheduling algorithms

This paper outlines the general decision problems encountered in the scheduling of vehicles for demand responsive transit. Several algorithmic processes are compared with respect to their handling of these decision problems.The main thesis of the paper is an identification of the major operational tasks of a demand responsive transit system and a discussion of the applicability of computer based procedures to handle these tasks. Alternative approaches to dispatching, a subset of the overall scheduling problem are reviewed. The economic and behavioral implications of each approach are discussed, and some numerical performance comparisons made. General guidelines for the design of dispatching and scheduling algorithms for demand responsive transit are presented.