Equitable Microtransit Services

Shared mobility services have shown that a continuum of solutions can be provided between traditional individual transport and mass transit by making use of an underlying cyber-physical substrate that provides advanced, distributed, and networked computational and communication support. Shared mobility services, also known as microtransit services, provide a way of solving the last-mile connectivity problem and can enable access to key services such as healthcare, jobs, and food for disadvantaged communities. Despite recent advances in optimizing energy efficiency in microtransit services, on-the-ground pilots have struggled to increase performance measures such as passenger miles per revenue mile or passengers per unit energy due to challenges in demand aggregation, understanding user needs, and human behavior. This chapter proposes a framework for multi-passenger transport that allows dynamic routing and behavioral dynamics of passengers and leads equitable microtransit services for members of disadvantaged communities. The implications of disadvantaged communities and how their needs may be met by the proposed framework are discussed. A numerical study based on a community in a Food Desert in the Western United States is presented.