A Dispatching and Routing Algorithm for Personal Rapid Transit by Considering Congestion
Personal rapid transit (PRT) is getting attention as a new form of transportation. It is energy efficient and provides the high level of passenger service. In this study, the dynamic PRT dispatching and routing problem is dealt with. Passengers request transportation service on a complex network, and an operating system monitors passenger arrivals and coordinates vehicles in real time. A new online dispatching and routing algorithm is proposed, which minimizes the total travel distance of vehicles and the waiting time of passengers. The algorithm dispatches vehicles by considering multiple vehicles' state and multiple passengers at the same time. In particular, finding the shortest time path is attempted by taking into account the future congestion on lanes. Discrete event simulation is employed to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The results show the algorithm in this study outperforms others.