Ride-Time Volatility in Demand Responsive Feeder Services with Meeting Points

Abstract

Demand Responsive Transport (DRT) has been widely used to complement scheduled public transport services in rural areas. The DRT’s routing policy is mostly characterized by user’s maximum ride time constraints given a fixed level of demand. Several post-evaluations of failed DRT systems show that users are very sensitive to their daily use experience, and the volatility in user experience within the guaranteed service level (e.g., maximum waiting time, maximum detour time) could discourage users from continuing to use the services. However, it is still unknown to what extent the stochastic nature of the user’s demand impacts the user’s experienced variability on the level of service. In this work, we investigate to what extent user’s day-to-day experience fluctuates due to demand stochasticity in a meeting-point-based DRT system. In particular, how the detour factor, a main system parameter used to bind the maximum ride time of users, impacts the volatility in users’ experience. Our simulation experiments show that all users experience maximum volatility in ride time regardless of their origin location, suggesting a more fitted system design parameter is needed to reduce user’s experienced variability.