Efficiency and Truthfulness in Dial-a-Ride Problems with Customers Location Preferences.

We look at the dial-a-ride problem through the lens of mechanism design, where the goal is to design mechanisms, toward natural objectives, in strategic settings, where customers act rationally. For this problem, we consider customer preferences for detour times and waiting times of services, as well as mechanisms for minimising the detour times, waiting times, and detour plus waiting times of customers on vehicles. We characterise mechanisms that are economically efficient and game-theoretically truthful. With detour-time preferences, we show that there are mechanisms that are both efficient and truthful in all instances. With waiting-time preferences, we show that there are mechanisms that are efficient but not truthful in some instances.