CLInstGen: An Instance Generation Framework for Two-Tier City Logistics

Abstract

City logistics addresses the design and management of efficient freight transportation in urban areas. Two-tier networks, where goods are moved by different vehicle fleets from distribution centers to customers using intermediate consolidation facilities, are particularly effective. Although studied from routing, location, and network design perspectives, the research progress is slowed by the lack of standardized, state-of-the-art benchmark data. Many studies rely on outdated and artificial or case-specific instances, limiting reproducibility, comparability, and generality of results. To address this gap, we identify general problem characteristics for two-tier city logistics, provide an instance generation framework CLInstGen that is applicable to a wide range of problem settings, and propose the first benchmark library CLLIB. The library and the CLInstGen code are open-source, allowing researchers to easily use, adapt, and generate instances for their specific applications. CLLIB is based on real-world geographies of urban regions and provides a curated collection of standardized instances for direct benchmarking of models and methods as well as statistical evaluation. A computational study with two different problem settings, namely tactical service network design on two tiers and vehicle routing with simultaneous pickups and deliveries on a single tier, confirms the versatility of both the generator and the library, and provides first numerical and managerial insights on the CLLIB benchmark instances.