A Hybrid Dispatch Strategy Based on the Demand Prediction of Shared Bicycles

Abstract

With the advent of pile-less shared bicycles, the techniques initially used for public bicycle dispatching were unable to fulfill the routine dispatch tasks, resulting in constant bicycle crowding. In this paper, to alleviate the mess of shared bicycles, we propose a hybrid dispatching algorithm based on bicycle demand data. We take the bicycle stations’ imbalance as an optimization index and use greedy ideas to ensure that after each dispatch all stations get the smallest imbalance. In addition, it is suggested that two assessment metrics evaluate the efficiency of the dispatching technique from the users and operators’ perspectives. It is shown that the proposed dispatching algorithm performs better in terms of user satisfaction and operator revenue, and is less affected by bicycle distribution compared with the traditional manual scheduling algorithm.