One-way carsharing systems allow travelers to pick up a car at one station and return it to adifferent station, thereby causing vehicle imbalances across the stations. In this paper, realisticways to mitigate that imbalance by relocating vehicles are discussed. Also presented are a newmathematical model to optimize relocation operations that maximize the profitability of thecarsharing service and a simulation model to study different real-time relocation policies. Bothmethods were applied to networks of stations in Lisbon Portugal. Results show that real-timerelocation policies, and these policies when combined with optimization techniques, can producesignificant increases in profit. In the case where the carsharing system provides maximumcoverage of the city area, imbalances in the network resulted in an operating loss of 1160 €/daywhen no relocation operations were performed. When relocation policies were applied, however,the simulation results indicate that profits of 854 €/day could be achieved, even with increasedcosts due to relocations. This improvement was achieved through reductions in the number ofvehicles needed to satisfy demand and the number of parking spaces needed at stations. This is akey result that demonstrates the importance of relocation operations for sustainably providing amore comprehensive network of stations in one-way carsharing systems, thus reaching a highernumber of users in a city.
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