Ride-Parcel-Pooling: Integrating On-Demand Passenger Transportation and City Logistics

Ride Parcel Pooling (RPP) is the integrated transportation of passengers and parcels. It builds on what's known as on-demand ride-pooling, which dynamically assigns customer trips to fleet vehicles in real time, sharing their rides, and thus aiming to save on driving distances and fleet size compared to on-demand ride-hailing services. In the case of RPP, a additional parcel demand is introduced that is less sensitive to longer travel and waiting times and is less negatively affected by changing vehicles. In this case, parcels are served with a lower priority than passengers and simply ride along with appropriate passenger trips. This makes it possible to achieve a more efficient use of vehicle capacity and further reduce the total distance traveled for passenger and logistics mobility. This research is divided into a conceptual and scenario definition part to define the proposed service and develop possible operational scenarios, a theoretical simulation-based approach to quantify the potential of the proposed RPP service, and a practical field test to investigate its real-world applicability. Agent-based RPP simulations show that the integration of logistics services into a ride-pooling service is possible and can exploit unused system capacity without degrading passenger service. Depending on the assignment strategies, parcels can be served up to a parcel-to-passenger demand ratio of 1:10, while total fleet kilometers can be reduced compared to the status quo, as the additional mileage for logistics service can be fully integrated. In the base scenario of the simulation, approximately 50,000 passengers and 5,000 parcels are transported by a fleet of 600 cars or 1,200 rickshaws. The RPP field test included a mobile phone web app and five bicycle rickshaws offering the RPP service in the Maxvorstadt district in Munich, Germany. Each rickshaw had two passenger seats and additional space for parcels. The service was available daily between 11:00 and 19:00 for one week and was completely free for users. The field test showed that the RPP service is ready to operate today and provided interesting insights into the real-world operational parameters for such a service.     «

Ride Parcel Pooling (RPP) is the integrated transportation of passengers and parcels. It builds on what's known as on-demand ride-pooling, which dynamically assigns customer trips to fleet vehicles in real time, sharing their rides, and thus aiming to save on driving distances and fleet size compared to on-demand ride-hailing services. In the case of RPP, a additional parcel demand is introduced that is less sensitive to longer travel and waiting times and is less negatively affected by changing...     »