California Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology

Travel constitutes an integral part of our daily life. Only by traveling are we able to engage in a variety of activities at different locations. Since the extension of our movement is restricted by the amount of time that is available and the speed with which we can move, it is important that our travel be efficiently organized such that the time resource can be best utilized to engage in activities in an efficient manner. One approach to achieving this is to choose less congested and faster routes. The use of in-vehicle advanced traveler information systems (ATIS) for this purpose has been extensively discussed in the ITS literature.

Little attention has been directed, on the other hand, to achieving the same goal by developing efficient travel itineraries. This becomes important when a traveler visits a number of places in a tour. Examples include a delivery truck driver who is supposed to deliver goods to multiple locations, or a tourist who wishes to visit a number of attraction spots. In these cases the traveler is interested in not only the best route connecting successive locations for visit, but also the best sequence of visiting the locations. The problem, however, is an extremely complex one to solve, whose solution may often be not obvious to the traveler. The objective of this project is to develop a tool that can assist the traveler in developing an efficient itinerary in which multiple locations can be visited with a minimal waste.

Also in the scope of this project is the development of an information system that will aid the traveler in using public transit in a complex tour in which multiple locations are visited. Underlying this is the beliefs that the availability of information affects the decision to use public transit in important manners, and that people will make complex tours by public transit if they are shown that it is possible and convenient to do so.

These considerations led to the conception of the “Travel Planner,” a computer software which assists the traveler by proposing to hider efficient itineraries for visiting multiple locations using alternative travel modes. Given the set of locations the traveler wishes to visit and the constraints associated with the visits, the Travel Planner develops alternative itineraries for the visits interactively with the traveler, or, the user. The planner presents alternative itineraries, and the user indicates the Planner which itinerary is more preferable. The planner in turn takes the feedback from the user and updates its objective function to better reflect the user’s preferences. This process is iterated until a satisfactory itinerary is found.