A Model for Sustainable Courier Services: Vehicle Routing with Exclusive Lanes

Abstract

In Southeast Asian cities, it is common for logistic companies to operate a heterogeneous fleet of delivery vehicles with motorcycles being the preferred vehicle to handle the final phase of delivery. In such scenarios, heterogeneous fleet vehicle routing problem (HFVRP) is generally applied to plan an optimal delivery. However, in many downtown cores of large and rapidly developing Southeast Asian cities, HFVRP is neither viable nor reliable because of road usage restrictions. The purpose of this article is to develop and test a different approach that accurately takes these restrictions into account and provides viable and more sustainable results. Restrictions in this paper refer to situations of urban areas in Vietnam where (i) certain vehicle types are prohibited in specified areas or where narrow alleyways limit the utilization of vehicles that exceed the road capacity and (ii) certain roads are exclusive to certain vehicle types. In networks, limited access and exclusive lanes are represented as links, or arcs, exclusive to one or another. Taking these limitations into consideration, we have developed a unique model, which we have termed Vehicle Routing Problem with Exclusive Links (VRP-EL). The model was validated and tested for its performance on scenarios with varying ratios of exclusive links. Scenarios up to 500 customers were tested on a meta-heuristic algorithm, simulated annealing. VRP-EL produces realistic outcomes. Limiting certain links to be selected according to vehicle types increases overall travel distance. However, this increase outweighs the cost of re-planning and rerouting had they not been constrained initially. The reduction in traveling distance leads to fossil fuel reduction for the overall system. The estimation of reduced carbon emissions through applying the proposed model is presented. Considering the severe traffic congestion and carbon emissions caused by motorcycles in Vietnam, the proposed model leads to a sustainable road environment.

Perspectives on Modeling Energy and Mobility Transitions for Stakeholders: A Dutch Case

“…Investigating potential materials for the production of electric vehicle batteries and other vehicle components Examining sustainable practices for operating shared autonomous vehicles and developing charging and swapping stations [110][111][112][113][114][115] The effectiveness of a connected vehicle system, taking into account factors such as safety, vehicle diversity, and technology market readiness [116,117] The impact of user incentives on the performance of a bike-sharing system [118] Assessing the influence of decision-making principles employed by practitioners (n = 4) (e.g., principles applied to vehicle routing problem-solving and sustainable mobility scenario generation) [119][120][121][122]…”

A Proposal and Analysis of New Realistic Sets of Benchmark Instances for Vehicle Routing Problems with Asymmetric Costs

“…A number of exact algorithms for ACVRPs were addressed in [11,12]. Subsequently, researchers have focused on numerous ACVRP variants, including backhaul [13], simultaneous pickup and delivery [14], heterogeneous fleets [10], exclusive lanes [15], stochastic demands [16], and time windows [17]. However, few researchers paid attention to the classical ACVRP itself.…”

A Multi-Depot Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Road Capacity and Reduced Two-Stage Stochastic Integer Linear Programming Models for Rollout Algorithm

“…Factors, such as the travel time and the reliability of the road, as well as the safety of the road, are optimised considering the road congestion and road capacity. Meanwhile, a crude binary form of road capacity is considered in [42]. In this particular problem, road capacity is rather exclusive to the type of vehicle used, namely vans and motorcycles for delivering goods.…”