COORDINATED TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS - AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO TRADITIONAL INDEPENDENT SYSTEMS

Public service agencies are servicing increasing numbers of clients as their operating funds continue to decrease. As a result, it is becomi ng more and more difficult for these agencies to maintain their effect iveness. This paper focuses upon shared transportation programs which is just one of the many cost-savings approaches public service agencie s are beginning to implement. As alternatives to current transportatio n procedures, two coordinated transportation systems are presented, ev aluated, and compared in a two agency-two vehicle system network scena rio on the basis of total optimal vehicle route lengths. It is illustr ated that significant cost savings can be achieved by coordinating tra nsportation resources among local agencies. The main contributions of this paper are the two optimization models that will serve as benchmar ks against which heuristic vehicle routing and scheduling models for c oordinated transportation systems can be compared and tested. Such heu ristics could then be incorporated into affordable software for use by local public service agencies.