{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,9,29]],"date-time":"2026-09-29T19:22:01Z","timestamp":1790709721188,"version":"4.1.0"},"reference-count":23,"publisher":"MDPI AG","issue":"2","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,16]],"date-time":"2019-02-16T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1550275200000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["Algorithms"],"abstract":"<jats:p>The transportation of elderly and impaired people is commonly solved as a Dial-A-Ride Problem (DARP). The DARP aims to design pick-up and delivery vehicle routing schedules. Its main objective is to accommodate as many users as possible with a minimum operation cost. It adds realistic precedence and transit time constraints on the pairing of vehicles and customers. This paper tackles the DARP with time windows (DARPTW) from a new and innovative angle as it combines hybridization techniques with an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic algorithm. The main objective is to improve the overall real-life performance of vehicle routing operations. Real-life data are refined and fed to a hybrid adaptive large neighborhood search (Hybrid-ALNS) algorithm which provides a near-optimal routing solution. The computational results on real-life instances, in the Canadian city of Vancouver and its region, and DARPTW benchmark instances show the potential improvements achieved by the proposed heuristic and its adaptability.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3390\/a12020039","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,17]],"date-time":"2019-02-17T22:11:50Z","timestamp":1550441510000},"page":"39","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3390\/mdpi_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":16,"title":["A Hybrid Adaptive Large Neighborhood Heuristic for a Real-Life Dial-a-Ride Problem"],"prefix":"10.3390","volume":"12","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0001-6567-2287","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Slim","family":"Belhaiza","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"Department of Mathematics and Statistics, King Fahd University of Petroleum &amp; Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1968","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2019,2,16]]},"reference":[{"key":"ref_1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"455","DOI":"10.1287\/trsc.1050.0135","article-title":"An adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for the pickup and delivery problem with time windows","volume":"40","author":"Ropke","year":"2006","journal-title":"Transp. 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