Agent-based Modeling for Dynamic Hitchhiking Simulation and Optimization

Although many new transportation services have emerged, hitchhiking continues to be popular, especially in rural areas. In the last 10 years, many countries have tried to encourage and revitalize this mode of transport for its ecological and social aspects. The objective is then to develop tools to ensure the connection of the users as well as the optimization of their journey while respecting the dynamic and volatile character of hitchhiking. In this perspective, we propose the Realtime Trip Avaibility Graph (ReTAG) approach. This approach consists of a recursive algorithm to identify and filter the relevant drivers for the riders. This algorithm generates a graph that allows the riders to establish a perception of the set of rideshares that are eligible and profitable to their situation. We establish a multi-agent system to describe the behavior and interactions of hitchhikers and drivers. We propose a comparative study of two hitchhiker behaviors. The first one simulating the behavior of a real hitchhiker, i.e. without any knowledge of his environment. The second one simulating a hitchhiker connected to an information system, and thus with knowledge of a part of the environment. We compare these two behaviors on more or less challenging problem instances in order to have a panel of convincing results. We conclude that the connected hitchhiker is superior to the real hitchhiker on a set of indicators such as the waiting time and the instance resolution speed.