Aid to the extension and to the exploitation of a public transportation service

In the current state, where the impacts of the pollution and the congestion of cities are increasingly acute, the public services like the car-sharing service can be an attractive complement for the other means of transportation. This type of service can reduce a part of traffic problems. To be efficient, the car-sharing service must ensure a high level of temporal and spatial availability. Car-sharing systems are most successful there where is sufficient economic and social activity and when that activity has a strong relationship to public transport. The efficiency of a ldquocar-sharingrdquo service necessitates an efficient management of the existing system and especially the study of the opportunities of its extension. This work proposes to the decision makers an approach of aid to the extension of the service based on the modeling of the preferences of the potential users. The collection and the modeling of the preferences are carried out using the orthogonal arrays. One hybrid approach using concepts of fuzzy logic and of the theory of evidence allows us to quantify the number of potentials users for several urban areas. A study case is discussed on order to show how indicators associated to the extended car-sharing service can be optimized by using this approach.