论文标题
在线预订中的离线车辆路由问题:一种新的问题提出,并申请帕拉特兰运输
Offline Vehicle Routing Problem with Online Bookings: A Novel Problem Formulation with Applications to Paratransit
论文作者
论文摘要
车辆路由问题(VRP)可以分为两个主要类别:离线VRP,它考虑要服务的给定旅行请求以及在线VRP,它们在实时到达时考虑了请求。基于与公共交通机构的讨论,我们确定了现有公式未解决的现实世界问题:预订带有灵活的拾取窗口(例如3小时)的预订旅行(例如,前一天),并确认预订时紧密的拾取窗口(例如,30分钟)。这种服务模型通常是在竞技台服务设置中需要的,乘客通常会在第二天通过电话预订旅行。为了解决离线和在线问题之间的差距,我们引入了一种新颖的配方,即在线预订中的离线车辆路由问题。这个问题在计算上非常具有挑战性,因为它面临着考虑大量请求的复杂性(类似于离线VRP),但必须遵守与在线VRP相似的严格限制。为了解决这个问题,我们提出了一种新颖的计算方法,该方法将任何时间算法与基于学习的实时决策政策结合在一起。基于田纳西州查塔努加公共交通机构获得的副译本数据集,我们证明,在这种情况下,我们的新颖配方和计算方法在这种情况下的结果明显优于现有算法。
Vehicle routing problems (VRPs) can be divided into two major categories: offline VRPs, which consider a given set of trip requests to be served, and online VRPs, which consider requests as they arrive in real-time. Based on discussions with public transit agencies, we identify a real-world problem that is not addressed by existing formulations: booking trips with flexible pickup windows (e.g., 3 hours) in advance (e.g., the day before) and confirming tight pickup windows (e.g., 30 minutes) at the time of booking. Such a service model is often required in paratransit service settings, where passengers typically book trips for the next day over the phone. To address this gap between offline and online problems, we introduce a novel formulation, the offline vehicle routing problem with online bookings. This problem is very challenging computationally since it faces the complexity of considering large sets of requests -- similar to offline VRPs -- but must abide by strict constraints on running time -- similar to online VRPs. To solve this problem, we propose a novel computational approach, which combines an anytime algorithm with a learning-based policy for real-time decisions. Based on a paratransit dataset obtained from the public transit agency of Chattanooga, TN, we demonstrate that our novel formulation and computational approach lead to significantly better outcomes in this setting than existing algorithms.