Multimodal Transport Systems

Slim Hammadi, Mekki Ksouri

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118577257
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Quality Control in Engineering
• Index: Technology & Engineering

The use and management of multimodal transport systems, including car-pooling and goods transportation, have become extremely complex, due to their large size (sometimes several thousand variables), the nature of their dynamic relationships as well as the many constraints to which they are subjected. The managers of these systems must ensure that the system works as efficiently as possible by managing the various causes of malfunction of the transport system (vehicle breakdowns, road obstructions, accidents, etc.). The detection and resolution of conflicts, which are particularly complex and must be dealt with in real time, are currently processed manually by operators. However, the experience and abilities of these operators are no longer sufficient when faced with the complexity of the problems to be solved. It is thus necessary to provide them with an interactive tool to help with the management of disturbances, enabling them to identify the different disturbances, to characterize and prioritize these disturbances, to process them by taking into account their specifics and to evaluate the impact of the decisions in real time.
Each chapter of this book can be broken down into an approach for solving a transport problem in 3 stages, i.e. modeling the problem, creating optimization algorithms and validating the solutions. The management of a transport system calls for knowledge of a variety of theories (problem modeling tools, multi-objective problem classification, optimization algorithms, etc.). The different constraints increase its complexity drastically and thus require a model that represents as far as possible all the components of a problem in order to better identify it and propose corresponding solutions. These solutions are then evaluated according to the criteria of the transport providers as well as those of the city transport authorities.
This book consists of a state of the art on innovative transport systems as well as the possibility of coordinating with the current public transport system and the authors clearly illustrate this coordination within the framework of an intelligent transport system.

Contents

1. Dynamic Car-pooling, Slim Hammadi and Nawel Zangar.
2. Simulation of Urban Transport Systems, Christian Tahon, Thérèse Bonte and Alain Gibaud.
3. Real-time Fleet Management: Typology and Methods, Frédéric Semet and Gilles Goncalves.
4. Solving the Problem of Dynamic Routes by Particle Swarm, Mostefa Redouane Khouahjia, Laetitia Jourdan and El Ghazali Talbi.
5. Optimization of Traffic at a Railway Junction: Scheduling Approaches Based on Timed Petri Nets, Thomas Bourdeaud'huy and Benoît Trouillet.

About the Authors

Slim Hammadi is Full Professor at the Ecole Centrale de Lille in France, and Director of the LAGIS Team on Optimization of Logistic systems. He is an IEEE Senior Member and specializes in distributed optimization, multi-agent systems, supply chain management and metaheuristics.
Mekki Ksouri is Professor and Head of the Systems Analysis, Conception and Control Laboratory at Tunis El Manar University, National Engineering School of Tunis (ENIT) in Tunisia. He is an IEEE Senior Member and specializes in control systems, nonlinear systems, adaptive control and optimization.

The multimodal transport network customers need to be oriented during their travels. A multimodal information system (MIS) can provide customers with a travel support tool, allowing them to express their demands and providing them with the appropriate responses in order to improve their travel conditions. This book develops methodologies in order to realize a MIS tool capable of ensuring the availability of permanent multimodal information for customers before and while traveling, considering passengers mobility.

Chapter 1

Dynamic Car-pooling

1.1. Introduction

In order to mitigate the negative impact of private cars and thus heal the environmental image of a personal vehicle, car-sharing systems were born. Within this context, car-pooling in particular has been a notable success thanks to the contributions it brings mainly by reducing the number of cars on the road. Indeed, making the personal car a common mode of transport, car-pooling plays a role in the reduction of harmful gas emission rates. The contributions are quantifiable in terms of “non-emitted” CO₂, in addition to the many advantages it offers on both an individual and a collective level (e.g. reduction of budgets allocated for transport, time-space flexibility, comfort, social balance, etc.). Thus it has made its entrance into the field of research, and numerous systems have since emerged. Several studies have been conducted in a manner that draws on the fields of computer science, artificial intelligence, GIS (Geographical Information Systems), the Internet and telecommunications, etc. Making use of new technologies and the establishment of a more or less evolved system has precedence over any other goal in existing approaches. Web-based media are today operational and allow the general public to register and benefit from fairly limited services such as publications and consultation of offers and demand, as well as acquisition of contact details for potential car-poolers. Unfortunately, this type of system is the only one that deserves recognition because the rest, despite their openness to advanced features such as the integration of real time and the automation of allocation tasks based on multi-agent systems, have remained at the “idea” or “draft” stage, and are not liable to improvement. Irrevocably launched onto the road towards improvement, in this chapter we propose the implementation of an optimized dynamic car-pooling system. Two main concepts will be discussed in particular, namely the modeling of the problem as a distributed dynamic graph, on the basis of which distributed software architecture is established, and the deployment of a multitude of autonomous entities under this architecture. The combination of multi-agent systems with the foundations for optimization has thus been put in the service of effectiveness of processing for the establishment of an approach in the context of distributed artificial intelligence.

1.2. State of the art

In recent years, the sharing of vehicles has become a remarkable phenomenon mainly due to the economic and environmental benefits it offers. Thus, people tend to go for the “self-shared” vehicles (self-service vehicles, car-pooling, etc.) and discard their own automobiles. In this context, there are nowadays several studies that revolve around the sharing of vehicles, allowing the completion of relatively efficient systems to exist in about 1,000 cities around the world already [WCC]. These systems provide more or less satisfactory services for users but are still in the early stages. The work done to date can be subdivided into two categories according to the criteria for booking management adopted within the system. The first category is based on a static booking management while the second deals in real time with a dynamic aspect. In what follows, we present a non-exhaustive list of what has been done in this regard by making a distinction between:

– operational systems implementing the concept of “Shared Vehicles” (we actually focus on car-sharing, car-pooling sites remaining, for the most part, open and non-optimized systems);

– the academic work done for modeling and optimization of such systems.

The existing operational systems are:

Static systems

– SEFAGE (SElbstFAhrerGEnossenshaft), which could be translated as “drivers club”. This is the oldest car-sharing organization traceable in the literature. It was founded in Zurich, Switzerland in 1948. It was essentially a club where members came together to buy a car. Without any commercial purpose, the main objective was to offer the service of having a vehicle available when needed. As the initiators were not aware of its innovative characteristics, SEFAGE never developed further.

– Lilas [LIL]: car-sharing was strongly implemented in Lille in France through this service in which a booking is made in advance by phone or online using a member number. The member, who receives a monthly invoice, must book each time for at least one hour of service but has the freedom of choosing a car of their choice from a station of their choice. However, despite the variety of stations and vehicles it provides to customers, the Lilas system has the disadvantage of limiting the time of use of its vehicles, working in a loop (return by the user to the station of departure) and not having real-time reservation services. Lilac offers competitive pricing for users subscribed to local transport and for families, and combines well with other forms of transport.

– Modulauto is the name associated with the car-sharing service available to the inhabitants of the city of Montpellier and the town of Nîmes in France. As part of the France Auto-partage service, Modulauto offers its members a fleet of self-service vehicles. Users reserve a car online or by phone at least 30 minutes in advance and the vehicle must be returned to a Modulauto station.

– Mobility is the market leader for car-sharing in Switzerland, with a portfolio of 55,500 clients for which it provides 1,700 vehicles. A partnership with public transport has contributed largely to the development of Mobility.

– Communauto [BEN] in Canada (Quebec, Montreal, Sherbrooke, Gatineau): since its foundation in 1994, Communauto appears to be a pioneering enterprise in America, as the manager of the oldest and one of the most important car-sharing services that has emerged on its side of the Atlantic. Communauto, which now has more than 14,000 members in Quebec, is the first car-sharing organization in the world to have signed the Charter for Sustainable Development of the International Union of Public Transport (IUPT).

– City Car Club presents itself as the solution to problems faced by owners of private vehicles in the UK. It is a car-sharing service offered to British citizens and, like its predecessors, has a fleet of self-service vehicles that members share amongst themselves.

– Cambio Stadt [MOB] in the city of Bremen in Germany: implemented in 2002 and owing to a partnership with Vivaldi and cooperation with Civitas, during its first three years, this project experienced a 43% increase in the number of users (2,455 to 3,512 in January 2005).

– I-GO and zipcar USA: having the same principle as the majority of the various systems listed above, car-sharing in the United States presents itself, for the zipcar company founded in June 2000 [ZIP] an...