Autonomous ferries in light of labor regulations—A passenger perspective

We study the potential effects of introducing autonomous ferries in a transportation system of water buses. We develop two integer linear programming models and a heuristic to find weekly passenger transportation plans. One model is tailored for a fleet of autonomous ferries and the other one for ma...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Christian Braathen, Julio C. Goez, Mario Guajardo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2024-12-01
Series:Maritime Transport Research
Subjects:
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666822X24000133
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We study the potential effects of introducing autonomous ferries in a transportation system of water buses. We develop two integer linear programming models and a heuristic to find weekly passenger transportation plans. One model is tailored for a fleet of autonomous ferries and the other one for manually operated ferries. The objective of the models is to minimize a penalty function for unmet demand, adding up penalties on time delays with respect to the wished time of arrivals of the passengers and penalties on the assignment of passengers to alternative transportation modes. The models differ because working laws affect the crews’ working capacities, and we study the changes when these requirements are absent with autonomous ferries. Our work is motivated by the case of Bergen, a coastal city in Norway. In this case, the use of autonomous ferries has the potential to improve passengers’ utility significantly. However, we suggest that it may be beneficial to consider autonomous ferries as a complementary alternative that can operate especially in low-demand hours—a recommendation that may be particularly relevant if there are few autonomous ferries available or the ferries can only be operative for a limited number of hours of the day.
ISSN:2666-822X