Adding transfers to ridepooling operations

In this research funded by MOIA, we (Farnoosh Namdarpour, Bingqing Liu, Nico Kühnel, Felix Zwick) investigated the prospect of adding passenger transfers to ridepooling services. The opportunity cost of committing two vehicles to a later transfer can be quite high; we compensated for this by introducing a new cost function term that can be calibrated to the operations. Results (tested on Sioux Falls and Hamburg) indicate varying levels of success that might be risky to implement at scale for general settings, but warrant further study to identify periods or hubs that may be more conducive to transfers. Should be of interest to ridepooling companies and microtransit services. Thanks to MOIA for the research support.