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arXiv · 2210.05700

Multi-purpose Pickup and Delivery Problem for Combined Passenger and Freight Transport

Jonas Hatzenbühler·Erik Jenelius·Győző Gidófalvi·Oded Cats
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Abstract

Recent developments in modular transport vehicles allow deploying multi-purpose vehicles which can alternately transport different kinds of flows. In this study, we propose a novel variant of the pickup and delivery problem, the multi-purpose pickup and delivery problem, where multi-purpose vehicles are assigned to serve a multi-commodity flow. We solve a series of use case scenarios using an exact optimization algorithm and an adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm. We compare the performance of a multi-purpose vehicle fleet to a mixed single-use vehicle fleet. Our findings suggest that total costs can be reduced by an average of 13% when multi-purpose vehicles are deployed, while at the same time reducing the total vehicle trip duration and total distance travelled by an average of 33% and 16%, respectively. The size of the fleet can be reduced by an average of 35%. The results can be used by practitioners and policymakers to decide on whether the combination of passenger and freight demand flows with multi-purpose vehicles in a given system will yield benefits compared to existing fleet configurations.

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Jonas Hatzenbühler, Erik Jenelius, Győző Gidófalvi, Oded Cats. 2022-10-11. Multi-purpose Pickup and Delivery Problem for Combined Passenger and Freight Transport. https://arxiv.org/abs/2210.05700

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