On the Value of Dynamism in Transit Networks

The rise of on-demand mobility technologies over the past decade has sparked interest in the integration of traditional transit and on-demand systems. One of the main reasons behind this is the potential to address a fundamental trade-off in transit: the ridership versus coverage dilemma. However, unlike purely fixed systems or purely on-demand systems, integrated systems are not well understood; their planning and operational problems are significantly more challenging, and their broader implications are the source of a heated debate. Motivated by this debate, we introduce the dynamicity gap, a general concept that quantifies the attainable benefit of allowing (but not requiring) dynamic components in the response strategy to a multistage optimization problem. Although computing the dynamicity gap exactly may be intractable, we develop an analytical framework with which to approximate it as a function of problem input parameters. The framework allows us to certify the value of dynamism (i.e., a dynamicity gap greater than one) for certain combinations of problem input parameters. We showcase our approach with two sets of computational experiments, from which we gain both qualitative and quantitative insights about the settings in which the integration of transit and on-demand systems may certifiably be a worthwhile investment.