We consider a future transportation system where the public transport operator owns a fleet of automated modular vehicles. These vehicles can either operate individually or be combined to form a larger vehicle with a higher capacity. The public transport operator is interested to apply these vehicles to provide intermodal transport services. Specifically, a portion of these vehicles is used as buses in a flexible bus dispatching system where the service frequency and vehicle allocation are dynamically determined. The other vehicles act as autonomous taxis and provide mobility-on-demand services. Passengers can choose either of the modes (buses or taxis), or a combination of them. We aim to develop strategies to 1) dynamically allocate the automated units to each type of services and 2) optimize the operations of the entire system to improve passenger mobility. The proposed strategies are based on multi-commodity flow model and can be solved in real-time.

CICTP