Unlike the fixed-route transit service, microtransit can thrive in rural and suburban areas with low demand density, because its operation is tailored to individual travel plans. Therefore, microtransit has great potential in improving mobility and accessibility for certain individuals in rural areas. Although many researchers have investigated how microtransit vehicle schedules and routes can be optimized, it is widely assumed that travel requests submitted by individual riders are accommodated independently, without exploring any coordination among riders. The proposed project aims to relax this assumption and test the hypothesis that a microtransit operator can significantly improve the operational efficiency (measured by the vehicle occupancy) by merely adjusting the requested pickup time windows through a process named rider schedule coordination. The following research tasks are proposed under this project: conducting a comprehensive review of individual decision-making coordination in microtransit, formulating and solving a mathematical program for schedule coordination, and deriving insights from extensive numerical studies and case studies. This project, once completed, can improve the microtransit accessibility for residents in rural communities and reduce the service delivery cost for the operator, both of which are well aligned with the center’s themes.
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