Vehicle sharing system with fleet sizing and multi-transportation modes under allowable shortages: a hybrid metaheuristic approach

ABSTRACT: In this paper, a vehicle sharing system with multi-transportation modes and allowable shortage is presented. This model aims to minimize the system's total cost by using optimum locations and number of stations, routes, transportation modes, station capacities for different modes and time between stations balancing. Because of the model's complexity, currently available proprietary software is not able to solve the model in a reasonable computational time, so a hybrid algorithm based on a genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization is presented. The results confirm its efficiency compared with the classic GA and exact solution methods. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis shows the applicability of the proposed algorithm.