On optimizing a demand responsive transport with an evolutionary multi-objective approach

This paper deals with a dial-a-ride problem with time windows applied to a demand responsive transport service. An evolutionary approach as well as new original representation and variation operators are proposed and detailed. Such mechanisms are used with three state-of-the-art multi-objective evolutionary algorithms: NSGA-II, IBEA and SPEA2. After introducing the general problem, the solution encoding and the algorithm mechanisms are depicted. The approach is assessed by applying the algorithms to both random and realistic dial-a-ride instances. Then a statistical comparison is provided in order to highlight the most suited evolutionary algorithms to optimize real-life transportation problems.