Route Planning in Transportation Networks

We survey recent advances in algorithms for route planning in transportation networks. For road networks, we show that one can compute driving directions in milliseconds or less even at continental scale. A variety of techniques provide different trade-offs between preprocessing effort, space requirements, and query time. Some algorithms can answer queries in a fraction of a microsecond, while others can deal efficiently with real-time traffic. Journey planning on public transportation systems, although conceptually similar, is a significantly harder problem due to its inherent time-dependent and multicriteria nature. Although exact algorithms are fast enough for interactive queries on metropolitan transit systems, dealing with continent-sized instances requires simplifications or heavy preprocessing. The multimodal route planning problem, which seeks journeys combining schedule-based transportation (buses, trains) with unrestricted modes (walking, driving), is even harder, relying on approximate solutions even for metropolitan inputs.Comment: This is an updated version of the technical report MSR-TR-2014-4, previously published by Microsoft Research. This work was mostly done while the authors Daniel Delling, Andrew Goldberg, and Renato F. Werneck were at Microsoft Research Silicon Valle

UnLimited TRAnsfers for Multi-Modal Route Planning: An Efficient Solution

We study a multi-modal route planning scenario consisting of a public transit network and a transfer graph representing a secondary transportation mode (e.g., walking or taxis). The objective is to compute all journeys that are Pareto-optimal with respect to arrival time and the number of required transfers. While various existing algorithms can efficiently compute optimal journeys in either a pure public transit network or a pure transfer graph, combining the two increases running times significantly. As a result, even walking between stops is typically limited by a maximal duration or distance, or by requiring the transfer graph to be transitively closed. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose a novel preprocessing technique called ULTRA (UnLimited TRAnsfers): Given a complete transfer graph (without any limitations, representing an arbitrary non-schedule-based mode of transportation), we compute a small number of transfer shortcuts that are provably sufficient for computing all Pareto-optimal journeys. We demonstrate the practicality of our approach by showing that these transfer shortcuts can be integrated into a variety of state-of-the-art public transit algorithms, establishing the ULTRA-Query algorithm family. Our extensive experimental evaluation shows that ULTRA is able to improve these algorithms from limited to unlimited transfers without sacrificing query speed, yielding the fastest known algorithms for multi-modal routing. This is true not just for walking, but also for other transfer modes such as cycling or driving

Engineering Algorithms for Route Planning in Multimodal Transportation Networks

Practical algorithms for route planning in transportation networks are a showpiece of successful Algorithm Engineering. This has produced many speedup techniques, varying in preprocessing time, space, query performance, simplicity, and ease of implementation. This thesis explores solutions to more realistic scenarios, taking into account, e.g., traffic, user preferences, public transit schedules, and the options offered by the many modalities of modern transportation networks

Impact and relevance of transit disturbances on planning in intermodal container networks

__Abstract__ An intermodal container transportation network is being developed between Rotterdam and several inland terminals in North West Europe: the European Gateway Services network. This network is developed and operated by the sea terminals of Europe Container Terminals (ECT). To use this network cost-efficiently, centralised planning by the sea terminal of the container transportation is required. For adequate planning it is important to adapt to occurring disturbances. In this paper, a new mathematical model is proposed: the Linear Container Allocation model with Time-restrictions (LCAT). This model is used for determining the influence of three main types of transit disturbances on the network performance: early departure, late departure, and cancellation of inland services. The influence of a disturbance is measured in two ways. The impact measures the additional cost incurred by an updated planning in case of a disturbance. The relevance measures the cost difference between a fully updated and a locally updated plan. With the results of the analysis, key service properties of disturbed services that result in a high impact or high relevance can be determined. Based on this, the network operator can select focus areas to prevent disturbances with high impact and to improve the planning updates in case of disturbances with high relevance. In a case study of the EGS network, the impact and relevance of transit disturbances on all network services are assessed

Faster Multi-Modal Route Planning With Bike Sharing Using ULTRA

We study multi-modal route planning in a network comprised of schedule-based public transportation, unrestricted walking, and cycling with bikes available from bike sharing stations. So far this problem has only been considered for scenarios with at most one bike sharing operator, for which MCR is the best known algorithm [Delling et al., 2013]. However, for practical applications, algorithms should be able to distinguish between bike sharing stations of multiple competing bike sharing operators. Furthermore, MCR has recently been outperformed by ULTRA for multi-modal route planning scenarios without bike sharing [Baum et al., 2019]. In this paper, we present two approaches for modeling multi-modal transportation networks with multiple bike sharing operators: The operator-dependent model requires explicit handling of bike sharing stations within the algorithm, which we demonstrate with an adapted version of MCR. In the operator-expanded model, all relevant information is encoded within an expanded network. This allows for applying any multi-modal public transit algorithm without modification, which we show for ULTRA. We proceed by describing an additional preprocessing step called operator pruning, which can be used to accelerate both approaches. We conclude our work with an extensive experimental evaluation on the networks of London, Switzerland, and Germany. Our experiments show that the new preprocessing technique accelerates both approaches significantly, with the fastest algorithm (ULTRA-RAPTOR with operator pruning) being more than an order of magnitude faster than the basic MCR approach. Moreover, the ULTRA preprocessing step also benefits from operator pruning, as its running time is reduced by a factor of 14 to 20

Human Motion Trajectory Prediction: A Survey

With growing numbers of intelligent autonomous systems in human environments, the ability of such systems to perceive, understand and anticipate human behavior becomes increasingly important. Specifically, predicting future positions of dynamic agents and planning considering such predictions are key tasks for self-driving vehicles, service robots and advanced surveillance systems. This paper provides a survey of human motion trajectory prediction. We review, analyze and structure a large selection of work from different communities and propose a taxonomy that categorizes existing methods based on the motion modeling approach and level of contextual information used. We provide an overview of the existing datasets and performance metrics. We discuss limitations of the state of the art and outline directions for further research.Comment: Submitted to the International Journal of Robotics Research (IJRR), 37 page

Instruments of Transport Policy.

The material in this Working Paper was generated as input to DETR's Guidance on the Methodology for Multi Modal Studies (GOMMMS). DETR subsequently decided only to provide summary information on transport policy measures, and to leave the consultants involved in individual multi modal studies to make their own assessment of individual policy measures in the context of specific study areas. It has been decided to make this fuller document available as a reference source. The purpose of the review of policy measures was to provide summary information on the range of policy measures available, experience of their use and, based on past studies, their potential contribution to the range of policy objectives specified for GOMMMS. The review was based on an earlier one included in the Institution of Highways and Transportation's Guidelines on Developing Urban Transport Strategies (1996). This material was updated using references published since 1996 and expanded to cover policy measures relevant in inter-urban areas. It had been intended to circulate it for comment before publishing a revised version. However, DETR decided to use an abridged version before this consultation was complete. It should be borne in mind that this document has not, therefore, undergone the peer assessment which had been intended. To avoid unnecessary further work, the material is presented as it had been drafted for the GOMMMS Guidance document. The only modifications have been to change the chapter and paragraph numbers, and to remove the cross references to other parts of the Guidance document

Integrating ULTRA and trip-based routing

We study a bi-modal journey planning scenario consisting of a public transit network and a transfer graph representing a secondary transportation mode (e.g., walking or cycling). Given a pair of source and target locations, the objective is to find a Pareto set of journeys optimizing arrival time and the number of required transfers. For public transit networks with a restricted, transitively closed transfer graph, one of the fastest known algorithms solving this bi-criteria problem is Trip-Based Routing [Witt, 2015]. However, this algorithm cannot be trivially extended to unrestricted transfer graphs. In this work, we combine Trip-Based Routing with ULTRA [Baum et al., 2019], a preprocessing technique that allows any public transit algorithm that requires transitive transfers to handle an unrestricted transfer graph. Since both ULTRA and Trip-Based Routing precompute transfer shortcuts in a preprocessing phase, a naive combination of the two leads to a three-phase algorithm that performs redundant work and produces superfluous shortcuts. We therefore propose a new, integrated preprocessing phase that combines the advantages of both and reduces the number of computed shortcuts by up to a factor of 9 compared to a naive combination. The resulting query algorithm, ULTRA-Trip-Based is the fastest known algorithm for the considered problem setting, achieving a speedup of up to 4 compared to the fastest previously known approach, ULTRA-RAPTOR

Integrating ULTRA and Trip-Based Routing

We study a bi-modal journey planning scenario consisting of a public transit network and a transfer graph representing a secondary transportation mode (e.g., walking or cycling). Given a pair of source and target locations, the objective is to find a Pareto set of journeys optimizing arrival time and the number of required transfers. For public transit networks with a restricted, transitively closed transfer graph, one of the fastest known algorithms solving this bi-criteria problem is Trip-Based Routing [Witt, 2015]. However, this algorithm cannot be trivially extended to unrestricted transfer graphs. In this work, we combine Trip-Based Routing with ULTRA [Baum et al., 2019], a preprocessing technique that allows any public transit algorithm that requires transitive transfers to handle an unrestricted transfer graph. Since both ULTRA and Trip-Based Routing precompute transfer shortcuts in a preprocessing phase, a naive combination of the two leads to a three-phase algorithm that performs redundant work and produces superfluous shortcuts. We therefore propose a new, integrated preprocessing phase that combines the advantages of both and reduces the number of computed shortcuts by up to a factor of 9 compared to a naive combination. The resulting query algorithm, ULTRA-Trip-Based is the fastest known algorithm for the considered problem setting, achieving a speedup of up to 4 compared to the fastest previously known approach, ULTRA-RAPTOR