REQreate 🚌

REQreate is a tool to generate instances for on-demand transportation problems. Such problems consist of optimizing the routes of vehicles according to passengers' demand for transportation under space and time restrictions (requests). REQreate is flexible and can be configured to generate instances for a large number of problems in this problem class. For example, the Dial-a-Ride Problem (DARP) and On-demand Bus Routing Problem (ODBRP). The tool makes use of real-life networks from OpenStreetMaps to generate instances for an extensive catalogue of existing and upcoming on-demand transportation problems.

✨ New: Web Interface

REQreate now includes a user-friendly web interface built with Streamlit! No need to edit JSON files manually.

Quick Start:

pip install .[app]
reqreate app

Or simply double-click run_webapp.bat (Windows)

The web interface provides:

• 🎨 Visual forms for all parameters
• 📊 Browse and preview existing instances
• �️ Interactive maps with request distribution visualization
• 🔥 Heatmaps for demand density analysis
• �🔄 Real-time generation progress
• 📚 Built-in documentation
• 💾 Easy data exploration

See WEBAPP.md for detailed instructions.

🌐 Deploy Online

Want to share REQreate with others? Deploy it to Hugging Face Spaces for free!

Hugging Face Spaces (Recommended):

• ✅ Free tier with 16GB RAM
• ✅ No timeout issues
• ✅ 50GB persistent storage
• ✅ Automatic HTTPS

Quick Deploy:

1. Create account at huggingface.co
2. Create new Space with Streamlit SDK
3. Push your code to the Space repository
4. App automatically builds and deploys

See DEPLOYMENT_GUIDE.md for detailed deployment instructions.

How to use REQreate?

Option 1: Web Interface (Recommended for new users)

Use the Streamlit web app for a guided, visual experience:

python -m streamlit run app.py

Option 2: Command Line (Advanced users)

Attributes and parameters that define an instance are described in a configuration file given as input to REQreate. The used syntax is JSON. Each configuration file can generate one or more instances and it should be given as parameter in the REQreate.py file. Edit "REQreate.py" indicating the desired configuration file and a name for the output folder and simply run "python REQreate.py" on your terminal. Check out this folder for examples of configuration files.

Questions? Do not hesitate to send an e-mail to:

michell.queiroz@uantwerpen.be

Installation requirements

Quick Install (Recommended)

1. Install Python 3.11+ (required by osmnx 2.x)

2. Install REQreate from a checkout of this repository:

pip install .[app]

3. Run the tool:
   • Web Interface: reqreate app — opens the interface in your browser, running entirely on your machine
   • Command Line: reqreate generate my_config.json
   • reqreate --help lists every option

Running the interface locally is the recommended way to use REQreate. Besides not depending on a hosted deployment, OpenStreetMap downloads then leave from your own IP address rather than one shared with every other user of a hosting platform, which is what gets requests refused by the public Overpass API.

Optional extras:

pip install .[app,parallel]

Troubleshooting: Overpass API errors

If generation fails with a connection error mentioning overpass-api.de, the public OpenStreetMap query servers are refusing or rate-limiting the request. This is unrelated to the location you asked for. REQreate retries and fails over across several mirrors automatically; if none of them work, set REQREATE_OVERPASS_URL to an Overpass instance you can reach:

export REQREATE_OVERPASS_URL=https://overpass.kumi.systems/api/interpreter

Detailed Installation

1. Have python 3.8 or a newer version installed

2. Install anaconda (optional but recommended)

   • Tutorial 1 anaconda
   • Tutorial 2 anaconda

3. Install OSMnx (necessary to retrieve the networks)

   • Tutorial OSMnx

4. Install Streamlit (for web interface)

pip install streamlit

5. Activate your environment (if using conda):

conda activate ox

Features

• 🌍 Real-world networks from OpenStreetMap
• 🚍 Flexible configuration for various on-demand transport problems
• 📊 Multiple output formats (CSV, JSON, GraphML, Pickle)
• 🎯 Realistic request patterns based on POI density
• ⏱️ Accurate travel times using actual road speeds
• 🖥️ User-friendly web interface for easy instance generation

Output Files

REQreate generates comprehensive datasets including:

• Bus station locations
• Network topology (walk + drive)
• Passenger requests with time windows
• Travel time matrices
• Zone definitions
• Points of Interest (POIs)
• Network visualizations