Assessing the impact of penalty strategies for cancellation behavior on the sustainability of demand-responsive transit service

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2026

Subject Area

place - asia, place - urban, mode - demand responsive transit, policy - sustainable, ridership - behaviour, ridership - demand, operations - reliability

Keywords

Demand-responsive transit, cancellation behavior, penalty strategies, pareto front, sustainability indicator

Abstract

The increasing urbanization has led to a growing demand for flexible transportation solutions, making demand-responsive transit (DRT) a promising alternative to traditional public transport. Nevertheless, passenger cancellation behavior poses the challenges to the reliability and sustainability of DRT services. To assess the impact of cancellation behavior, a two-phase optimization framework is established in this study. Penalty strategies can be divided into time-based penalty strategy and fixed-penalty strategy. Additionally, we construct a hybrid heuristic algorithm that combines variable neighborhood search (VNS) and rolling horizon in response to dynamic characteristics. Numerous experiments on a realistic network in Beijing are further performed to evaluate the impact of cancellation behavior on the DRT service. At the same level of penalty cost, DRT service with time-based penalty strategy was superior to the service with fixed penalty strategy. This study is sconducive to the economic, social, and environmental sustainability of DRT services.

Rights

Permission to publish the abstract has been given by Taylor&Francis, copyright remains with them.

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