Efficient and Privacy-Preserving Ride Sharing Organization for Transferable and Non-Transferable Services

Ride-sharing allows multiple persons to share their trips together in one vehicle instead of using multiple vehicles. This can reduce the number of vehicles in the street, which consequently can reduce air pollution, traffic congestion and transportation cost. However, a ride-sharing organization requires passengers to report sensitive location information about their trips to a trip organizing server (TOS) which creates a serious privacy issue. In addition, existing ride-sharing schemes are non-flexible, i.e., they require a driver and a rider to have exactly the same trip to share a ride. Moreover, they are non-scalable, i.e., inefficient if applied to large geographic areas. In this paper, we propose two efficient privacy-preserving ride-sharing organization schemes for Non-transferable Ride-sharing Services (NRS) and Transferable Ride-sharing Services (TRS). In the NRS scheme, a rider can share a ride from its source to destination with only one driver whereas, in TRS scheme, a rider can transfer between multiple drivers while en route until he reaches his destination. In both schemes, the ride-sharing area is divided into a number of small geographic areas, called cells, and each cell has a unique identifier. Each driver/rider should encrypt his trip's data and send an encrypted ride-sharing offer/request to the TOS. In NRS scheme, Bloom filters are used to compactly represent the trip information before encryption. Then, the TOS can measure the similarity between the encrypted trips data to organize shared rides without revealing either the users' identities or the location information. In TRS scheme, drivers report their encrypted routes, an then the TOS builds an encrypted directed graph that is passed to a modified version of Dijkstra's shortest path algorithm to search for an optimal path of rides that can achieve a set of preferences defined by the riders

On green routing and scheduling problem

The vehicle routing and scheduling problem has been studied with much interest within the last four decades. In this paper, some of the existing literature dealing with routing and scheduling problems with environmental issues is reviewed, and a description is provided of the problems that have been investigated and how they are treated using combinatorial optimization tools

Park-and-Ride Facilities Design for Special Events Using Space-Time Network Models

abstract: Given that more and more planned special events are hosted in urban areas, during which travel demand is considerably higher than usual, it is one of the most effective strategies opening public rapid transit lines and building park-and-ride facilities to allow visitors to park their cars and take buses to the event sites. In the meantime, special event workforce often needs to make balances among the limitations of construction budget, land use and targeted travel time budgets for visitors. As such, optimizing the park-and-ride locations and capacities is critical in this process of transportation management during planned special event. It is also known as park-and-ride facility design problem. This thesis formulates and solves the park-and-ride facility design problem for special events based on space-time network models. The general network design process with park-and-ride facilities location design is first elaborated and then mathematical programming formulation is established for special events. Meanwhile with the purpose of relax some certain hard constraints in this problem, a transformed network model which the hard park-and-ride constraints are pre-built into the new network is constructed and solved with the similar solution algorithm. In doing so, the number of hard constraints and level of complexity of the studied problem can be considerable reduced in some cases. Through two case studies, it is proven that the proposed formulation and solution algorithms can provide effective decision supports in selecting the locations and capabilities of park-and-ride facilities for special events.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Civil and Environmental Engineering 201

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

A concise guide to existing and emerging vehicle routing problem variants

Vehicle routing problems have been the focus of extensive research over the past sixty years, driven by their economic importance and their theoretical interest. The diversity of applications has motivated the study of a myriad of problem variants with different attributes. In this article, we provide a concise overview of existing and emerging problem variants. Models are typically refined along three lines: considering more relevant objectives and performance metrics, integrating vehicle routing evaluations with other tactical decisions, and capturing fine-grained yet essential aspects of modern supply chains. We organize the main problem attributes within this structured framework. We discuss recent research directions and pinpoint current shortcomings, recent successes, and emerging challenges

Urban Public Transportation Planning with Endogenous Passenger Demand

An effective and efficient public transportation system is crucial to people\u27s mobility, economic production, and social activities. The Operations Research community has been studying transit system optimization for the past decades. With disruptions from the private sector, especially the parking operators, ride-sharing platforms, and micro-mobility services, new challenges and opportunities have emerged. This thesis contributes to investigating the interaction of the public transportation systems with significant private sector players considering endogenous passenger choice. To be more specific, this thesis aims to optimize public transportation systems considering the interaction with parking operators, competition and collaboration from ride-sharing platforms and micro-mobility platforms. Optimization models, algorithms and heuristic solution approaches are developed to design the transportation systems. Parking operator plays an important role in determining the passenger travel mode. The capacity and pricing decisions of parking and transit operators are investigated under a game-theoretic framework. A mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) model is formulated to simulate the player\u27s strategy to maximize profits considering endogenous passenger mode choice. A three-step solution heuristic is developed to solve the large-scale MINLP problem. With emerging transportation modes like ride-sharing services and micro-mobility platforms, this thesis aims to co-optimize the integrated transportation system. To improve the mobility for residents in the transit desert regions, we co-optimize the public transit and ride-sharing services to provide a more environment-friendly and equitable system. Similarly, we design an integrated system of public transit and micro-mobility services to provide a more sustainable transportation system in the post-pandemic world

Autonomous driving: a bird's eye view

[Abstract:] The introduction of autonomous vehicles (AV) will represent a milestone in the evolution of transportation and personal mobility. AVs are expected to significantly reduce accidents and congestion, while being economically and environmentally beneficial. However, many challenges must be overcome before reaching this ideal scenario. This study, which results from on-site visits to top research centres and a comprehensive literature review, provides an overall state-of-the-practice on the subject and identifies critical issues to succeed. For example, although most of the required technology is already available, ensuring the robustness of AVs under all boundary conditions is still a challenge. Additionally, the implementation of AVs must contribute to the environmental sustainability by promoting the usage of alternative energies and sustainable mobility patterns. Electric vehicles and sharing systems are suitable options, although both require some refinement to incentivise a broader range of customers. Other aspects could be more difficult to resolve and might even postpone the generalisation of automated driving. For instance, there is a need for cooperation and management strategies geared towards traffic efficiency. Also, for transportation and land-use planning to avoid negative territorial and economic impacts. Above all, safe and ethical behaviour rules must be agreed upon before AVs hit the road.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; TRA2016-79019-R/COO