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Comment by akeruu | Hacker News Reader

Genuine candid question : why use this when we have more established solutions like Graphhopper[0], the OSRM Project[1] or Open Trip Planner[2] among others ?

[0] https://graphhopper.com/

[1] http://project-osrm.org/

[2] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenTripPlanner

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Another option to consider: Valhalla, the only open-source routing engine that can plan multimodal journeys (car, transit, walk, cycle) around the world. It can, for example, plan a journey on foot, rail, and bus that crosses multiple metro regions.

- all code at https://github.com/valhalla

- also available as a hosted service for free at https://mapzen.com/projects/turn-by-turn/

(N.B. I'm employed by Mapzen.)

You can also try out Mapzen's routing service along with many others, like OSRM and GraphHopper, on the OpenStreetMap site. For example: http://www.openstreetmap.org/directions?engine=mapzen_bicycl...

Each routing engine has its strengths and weaknesses. Great that all share their code as open-source.

Thanks for the question! I'll admit I have limited knowledge about those services, but I believe they solve a slightly different problem. Pathfinder's primary use is services that have N drivers that can service any of M transportation requests.

The GraphHopper and OSRM Matrix APIs are closer to what Pathfinder does, however they do not assign route segments to vehicles. Pathfinder is perhaps one abstraction layer over them.

What are you using for calculating the time or distances between the services? (Edit: okay, saw another comment stating you are using Google Matrix API)

Basically you need a distance matrix for your vehicle routing problem.

BTW: the GraphHopper Directions API uses jsprit to solve VRP etc problems: https://graphhopper.com/#os-comparison

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