A capacity matching model in a collaborative urban public transport system: integrating passenger and freight transportation

Working from home becomes the norm; this trend has put added pressure on urban logistics, as large volumes of goods and services are required for domestic use. Meanwhile, public transport operators face a big challenge and trade-off due to higher labour and frequent cleaning costs, with lower passenger revenue over a longer period. Considering the collaborative urban public transport services achieve a seamless movement for both passengers and goods, and could reduce the adverse effects of the existing urban public transport systems. Therefore, a mixed-integer linear programming model introducing the concept of capacity matching is proposed to assist this collaborative urban freight service network in minimising total freight transport time at station hubs and not affecting passenger transportation in this paper. Moreover, an efficient improved optimisation algorithm based on the Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm (ABC) is designed, and the numerical examples and real cases are illustrated to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed model and algorithm. The performance evaluations suggest that the coordinated operating strategy of the collaborative freight transportation system supports increasing mobility demands for freight, resulting in declining congestion levels and reducing transport emissions, while no influence in passenger transport, notably in urban areas.