A Location Based Dial-A-Ride Service System for the Elderly and the Disabled in Taiwan

In recent years, Taiwan has gradually become an aging society, and thus a friendly and convenient transportation system for the elderly and the disabled becomes more and more important for the country. Regular mass transportation systems are not suitable for such population due to these users´ limited physical ability. Currently, there are dial-a-ride transportation systems that provide door-to-door services for the disabled in Taiwan. However, the late response and inflexibility of these systems have caused their low utilization and high costs. The present study attempts to establish a location based service system that continuously monitors the positions of vehicles and quickly responses to users´ requests. The user can use a mobile device to send a transportation request to the operation center. At the moment, the user´s position will be automatically detected. This position information, together with the pickup time and destination requested by the user, is sent to the operation center. A routing and dispatching module will process this request, and one of the vehicles in service will be rerouted to pick up the user if there is any feasible one. The rerouting of vehicles is a dynamic vehicle routing problem and is solved with dedicated algorithms, in which, the current status of a vehicle is considered, such as the position, the capacity, the operation hours, and the initially planned route of the vehicle.