Abstract
Personalized public transit routing in public transit systems remains challenging due to the difficulty of capturing and integrating diverse user preferences into routing algorithms. This paper presents ChatPlanner, a novel framework that leverages Large Language Models (LLMs) to enable preference-aware public transit routing.
Our approach employs fine-tuned LLMs with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to extract routing parameters and interpret nuanced user preferences from natural language queries, subsequently integrating these preferences into the objective function of a public transit routing algorithm. This study designs preference-aware datasets incorporating eight personas and five contexts to establish scoring standards for both fine-tuning and RAG.
This work conducted three experiments to validate the solutions' feasibility, extraction of routing information and preferences, and solution set quality and completeness. Results demonstrate that ChatPlanner generates feasible solutions reliably. Fine-tuning enforces the required output structure and learns general preference patterns, while RAG provides query-specific context to resolve imprecise or conversational expressions and calibrate continuous scores. The combination of both achieves the highest accuracy in routing information extraction and user preference interpretation.
Results based on selected case studies show that by capturing user preferences, ChatPlanner identifies valuable solutions across different dimensions that existing route planners overlook, generating more valuable route alternatives. This research establishes a new paradigm for integrating natural language understanding into transportation optimization.
Blogger's Review: The innovation of ChatPlanner lies in its powerful combination of LLMs and RAG, offering personalized services to users in public transit systems. This research not only advances the frontier of transportation optimization but also lays a crucial foundation for future smart transportation solutions. Its successful methods for capturing user preferences and generating routes are worthy of emulation and application across various fields.