Contents I. Introduction
Transportation is an important and crucial component for the rapid and sustainable development of economy, since it supports personal daily traveling and the movement of commodities [1]. Effective transportation management has received much attention from both researchers and practitioners. Considerable transportation management problems have been studied extensively over the last decades, such as network planning [2]–[4], route design [5]–[7], and vehicle scheduling [8]–[10]. However, the rapid increase in traffic demand is causing more and more severe congestion, especially in big cities. According to the report provided by the Ministry of Public Security of the Peoples Republic of China, the car ownership has exceeded 300 million by the end of 2021 and is still showing a rising trend. As a consequence, a series of traffic problems, such as road accidents, low transportation efficiency, fuel waste, unpredictable travel time and environmental pollution, are caused [11]. The most straightforward way to alleviating them is to expand the transport network by building new road infrastructures. However, long schedules, high costs and limited land resources are making it increasingly difficult. Moreover, some special transport needs bring new great challenges for traffic managers. For example, the athletes must be delivered from the village of athletes to any competition venue within thirty minutes during the Guangzhou Asian Games in 2010 [12]. However, the traffic condition in the host city is already overwhelmed, such that it is almost impossible to meet this requirement without considering extraordinary measures. Therefore, developing advanced traffic management strategies to take full advantage of existing transport networks becomes increasingly important and necessary.
