Reducing the wasted transportation capacity of Personal Rapid Transit systems: An integrated model and multi-objective optimization approach

•The presentation of new urban mobility option based on PRT.•The proposition of a new multi-objective optimization routing problem.•The proposition of two solution approaches to solve small and large instances size.•The effectiveness of the proposed solution approaches is studied.

This study addresses the problem of wasted transportation capacity in Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems. We propose a two-tier transportation model that integrates PRT and capillary transportation systems. We study a related multi-objective empty vehicle redistribution problem that attempts to minimize empty movement and the number of vehicles used. Furthermore, we design a hybrid multi-objective genetic algorithm that integrates multiple crossover operators and linear programming techniques to solve the proposed problem. Evaluations indicate that our algorithm produces satisfactory results, and simulations confirm the efficiency of our proposed two-tier transportation system.