A Decision-Support System for the Car Pooling Problem

The continuous increase of human mobility combined with a relevant use of private vehicles contributes to increase the ill effects of vehicle externalities on the environment, e.g. high levels of air pollution, toxic emissions, noise pollution, and on the quality of life, e.g. parking problem, traffic congestion, and increase in the number of crashes and accidents. Transport demand management plays a very critical role in achieving greenhouse gas emission reduction targets. This study demonstrates that car pooling (CP) is an effective strategy to reduce transport volumes, transportation costs and related hill externalities in agreement with EU programs of emissions reduction targets. This paper presents an original approach to solve the CP problem. It is based on hierarchical clustering models, which have been adopted by an original decision support system (DSS). The DSS helps mobility managers to generate the pools and to design feasible paths for shared vehicles. A significant case studies and obtained results by the application of the proposed models are illustrated. They demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach and the supporting decisions tool.