Planning and operating a shared goods and passengers on-demand rapid transit system for sustainable city-logistics

• The characterization of the role of shared rapid transit in urban areas.
• The proposition of a forward optimization for dynamic transportation problems.
• The examination of two realistic cases to illustrate the usefulness of the approach.
• The potential gain in sustainability of sharing goods and passengers on a network.
• The improvement of service time and wasting energy using urban freight rapid transit.

This article investigates the potential of integrating a shared goods and passengers on-demand rapid transit system in urban areas. Although persons and goods movements have different objectives and constraints, mixing their travels on the same network is within current trends. So we investigate in this paper how they could share a rapid transit network and use the available transportation capacity within a city more efficiently in an interconnected way. Based on the common characteristics of personal rapid transit (PRT) and freight rapid transit (FRT), this paper proposes an emergent and efficient transportation solution in order to enhance the sustainability of city logistics. Next, the operational level is focused on to characterize the dynamic transportation problem and to propose two strategies to formulate it. This problem aims to respond to the number of transportation requests arriving on a periodic basis with adequate service level while minimizing the empty movements of a set of electric vehicles with limited battery capacity. An efficient solution approach based on the forward optimization of periodic transportation sub-problems is proposed and validated. The applicability of the PRT–FRT mode is demonstrated and computational results in comparison to other transportation option is also presented and discussed.