Multi-purpose pickup and delivery problem for combined passenger and freight transport
Jonas Hatzenbühler (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
Erik Jenelius (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
Gyözö Gidófalvi (KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
O Cats (TU Delft - Transport and Planning, KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
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Abstract
Recent advances in the development of modular transport vehicles allow deploying multi-purpose vehicles, which enable alternate transport of different demand types. 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 fleet of single-purpose vehicles. Depending on cost parameters, our findings suggest that in certain scenarios, the total costs can be reduced by an average of 13% when multi-purpose vehicles are deployed, while at the same time reducing total vehicle trip duration and total distance traveled by on average 33% and 16%, respectively. The required fleet size can be reduced by 35% on average when operating multi-purpose vehicles. The results can be used by practitioners and policymakers to determine if the combined service of passenger and freight demand flows with multi-purpose vehicles in a given system will yield benefits compared to existing transport operations.
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