Why This Matters

Current mobility decision support systems focus on individual user objectives without considering how routing decisions collectively impact system-level congestion and travel times. This work is innovative because it formulates routing as an optimization problem that balances individual user preferences with system-level social welfare, enabling communities to reduce congestion through route recommendations that are perceived as optimal by users while improving overall system performance.

What We Did

This paper proposes socially optimal multi-modal routing that considers system-level impacts on overall traffic congestion in addition to individual user preferences. The work develops algorithms to compute routes that maximize utility for individual users while accounting for the externalities of routing decisions on other users and the transportation network. The approach uses traffic simulation to evaluate multi-modal routing strategies and their impact on congestion.

Key Results

Socially optimal multi-modal routing significantly reduced average travel time across all users compared to individually optimal routing, especially when a high percentage of users adopted system-suggested routes. The simulation analysis demonstrated that even partial adoption of socially optimal routes could improve system-level performance without adversely affecting early adopters. The results support using community-aware routing algorithms in transportation decision support systems.

Full Abstract

Cite This Paper

@misc{Samal2018a,
  author = {Samal, Chinmaya and Zheng, Liyuan and Sun, Fangzhou and Ratliff, Lillian J. and Dubey, Abhishek},
  title = {Towards a Socially Optimal Multi-Modal Routing Platform},
  year = {2018},
  abstract = {The increasing rate of urbanization has added pressure on the already constrained transportation networks in our communities. Ride-sharing platforms such as Uber and Lyft are becoming a more commonplace, particularly in urban environments. While such services may be deemed more convenient than riding public transit due to their on-demand nature, reports show that they do not necessarily decrease the congestion in major cities. One of the key problems is that typically mobility decision support systems focus on individual utility and react only after congestion appears. In this paper, we propose socially considerate multi-modal routing algorithms that are proactive and consider, via predictions, the shared effect of riders on the overall efficacy of mobility services. We have adapted the MATSim simulator framework to incorporate the proposed algorithms present a simulation analysis of a case study in Nashville, Tennessee that assesses the effects of our routing models on the traffic congestion for different levels of penetration and adoption of socially considerate routes. Our results indicate that even at a low penetration (social ratio), we are able to achieve an improvement in system-level performance.},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
  biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/journals/corr/abs-1802-10140},
  contribution = {lead},
  eprint = {1802.10140},
  file = {:Samal2018a-Towards_a_Socially_Optimal_Multi-Modal_Routing_Platform.pdf:PDF},
  journal = {CoRR},
  keywords = {multi-modal routing, transportation, social welfare, congestion reduction, system optimization},
  project = {smart-transit,smart-cities},
  tag = {transit},
  timestamp = {Mon, 13 Aug 2018 01:00:00 +0200},
  url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1802.10140},
  volume = {abs/1802.10140}
}
Quick Info
Year 2018
Keywords
multi-modal routing transportation social welfare congestion reduction system optimization
Research Areas
transit planning
Search Tags

Towards, Socially, Optimal, Multi, Modal, Routing, Platform, multi-modal routing, transportation, social welfare, congestion reduction, system optimization, transit, planning, 2018, Samal, Zheng, Sun, Ratliff, Dubey