Communicate availability in carsharing

[ValentinCitiz]

Hi,

We implemented a GBFS feed for our carshing service in France (Citiz), but are unsure about the use of vehicles[].is_reserved and the vehicles[].available_until attributes in the vehicle_status.json file.

Our vehicles are assigned to stations, they can be booked in advance and the duration of the rental can be chosen by our clients.

In our GBFS implementation of the vehicle_status.json file, we set the vehicles[].is_reserved to true if the vehicle is currently in a rental, false otherwise (without regarding any futur reservations).

The vehicles[].available_until attribut is set to the starting date of the next following reservation. If there is no futur reservation, the field is left empty.

Is that the way those attributes should be used ? Is there a way to indicate when a rented vehicle will be again available ?

Thanks in advance for your help!

[mplsmitch]

In our GBFS implementation of the vehicle_status.json file, we set the vehicles[].is_reserved to true if the vehicle is currently in a rental, false otherwise (without regarding any futur reservations).

is_reserved is used to indicate that a parked vehicle is unavailable for use because of a pending reservation. For example, someone has reserved a vehicle for rental but has not picked it up yet. These are not vehicles that are currently part of an active rental. To protect user privacy, vehicles in active rental should never appear in the feed. This feature originated in bike sharing so it may be less applicable to car sharing. Some bike sharing systems allows users to remotely reserve a bike in advance for a short period of time, say 15 minutes. You could use it along with available_until for car sharing, setting is_reserved = true when the value of available_until is reached.

The vehicles[].available_until attribut is set to the starting date of the next following reservation. If there is no futur reservation, the field is left empty.

available_until is used to indicate when any rental of the vehicle must be completed and the vehicle returned. If a vehicle's next reservation is at 2:00, this is the time prior to 2:00 that you want the vehicle returned to it's parking space. If there is no future reservation it should be blank.

The latest rease candidate : Version 3.1-RC2 adds additional features in the new vehicle_avialability.json endpoint

[ValentinCitiz]

Thanks for quick your reply! The changes in the 3.1 version are a great news. I really looking forward this update, it will simplify a lot of things in availability management!

Just to be sure I understood correctly, for the v3.0 :
In the scenario of having a two reservations on a vehicle, let's say from to 9:00 to 10:00 and 11:00 to 12:00.

• If we request the data at 9:30 : is_reserved should be set to true (because we are in the middle of a reservation) and available_until to 11:00 (date of the next reservation)
• At 10:30 : is_reserved should be false and available_until still to 11:00
• And at 11:30 : is_reserved should be true and available_until should be left empty (since there are no more future reservation ?)

Is that the way this should be implemented ?

Thanks again in advance for your help!

[mplsmitch]

If we request the data at 9:30 : is_reserved should be set to true (because we are in the middle of a reservation) and available_until to 11:00 (date of the next reservation)

When a vehicle is in the possession of a user it should never appear in the feed. The only vehicles that should be in the feed are those that are not in use. This is to prevent tracking of user's locations.

If at 9:30 the car has not been picked up by the user, you would set is_reserved = true and available_until should be blank because the vehicle is not currently available for rental.

Once a user takes possession of a vehicle, it should disappear from the feed. If you have a fleet of 100 vehicles and 25 are currently in use, your vehicle_status file should contain 75 vehicles.

At 10:30 : is_reserved should be false and available_until still to 11:00

This is technically correct although I don't know that you need to set is_reserved. What you are saying is that the vehicle is currently available for rental and that any rental needs to be completed (vehicle returned) by 11:00. If that works with your business rules then it's correct. If the user should be returning the vehicle by 10:50 so that it's ready for the 11:00 reservation, then you would set available_until to 10:50.

The is_reserved boolean tells you if the vehicle is currently available for rental at this point in time. When you want to stop offering a vehicle for rental in advance of a reservation, you set is_reserved = true. is_reserved = false is the same as is_reserved = blank, both of these mean that you are currently offering to rent the vehicle.

And at 11:30 : is_reserved should be true and available_until should be left empty (since there are no more future reservation ?)

Once again, vehicles that are currently in rental should never appear in the feed so in this case none of these fields are relevant, unless the vehicle was not picked up by the user.

[ValentinCitiz]

Ok, thank you for all the details! We didn't noticed that the vehicle currently in a rental should be filter out of the result. In our feed we returned all the vehicle but never updated the lat/lon value (to avoid tracking and protect data privacy). We will also add this to our changes.

Thanks again for the help, it was really appreciated !