Insights into Car Sharing Relocation Policies Using a Simulation-Optimization Approach

One-way carsharing allows customers to pick up a vehicle from one location and drop it off at another one. While this approach is gaining acceptance over two-way or free-floating carsharing for small populations, it suffers from vehicle imbalances: excess vehicles at some stations and shortages at others. Proper investigations are necessary to minimize these imbalances. This paper compares two relocation policies in a Jordanian pilot case study using discrete event simulation: user-based (adjusting service prices to influence demand) and staff-based (hiring external resources). Results show that the staff-based policy outperformed the user-based policy by 55.4 % in vehicle utilization and by 3.4 % in cycle service level. However, the user-based policy achieved higher overall gains.