Framework Capabilities

The primary features that this optimization framework sought to achieve include:

• Demand-responsive routing rather than operation on a fixed schedule. This is necessary for us to worry less about generating transit designs around peak demand levels that do not function as efficiently with nominal demand levels. We also hope that the system would utilize command and control networks that take advantage of available communications infrastructure to book requests and guide passengers through the system.
• Allow optimal transfer strategies to emerge. At different loading levels, the system vehicles may organize themselves like ``hub & spoke'' / ``feeder & trunk'' networks for efficiency, or begin to resemble more direct point-to-point routing during lighter loading or when existing hubs become constrained.
• Multi-objective goal functions, including terms for maximizing service quality such as:
  1. high throughput
  2. low average latency from sources to destinations
  3. efficiency terms that would minimize general operating costs associated with the number of vehicles operating in the fleet and the number of segments they would have to travel