Synchronizing vans and cargo bikes in a city distribution network

Alexandra Anderluh (), Vera C. Hemmelmayr () and Pamela C. Nolz ()
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Alexandra Anderluh: WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
Vera C. Hemmelmayr: WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
Pamela C. Nolz: AIT Austrian Institute of Technology

Central European Journal of Operations Research, 2017, vol. 25, issue 2, No 5, 345-376

Abstract: Abstract One of the significant side-effects of growing urbanization is the constantly increasing amount of freight transportation in cities. This is mainly performed by conventional vans and trucks and causes a variety of problems such as road congestion, noise nuisance and pollution. Yet delivering goods to residents is a necessity. Sustainable concepts of city distribution networks are one way of mitigating difficulties of freight services. In this paper we develop a two-echelon city distribution scheme with temporal and spatial synchronization between cargo bikes and vans. The resulting heuristic is based on a greedy randomized adaptive search procedure with path relinking. In our computational experiments we use artificial data as well as real-world data of the city of Vienna. Furthermore we compare three distribution policies. The results show the costs caused by temporal synchronization and can give companies decision-support in planning a sustainable city distribution concept.

Keywords: City logistics; Synchronization; GRASP with path relinking; Cargo bikes; Two-echelon VRP (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (31)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10100-016-0441-z

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