Green vehicle routing problem with path flexibility

摘要

In this paper, we consider the vehicle routing problem in the context that - multiple paths are optional between each customer pairs, while only one path is implied in traditional vehicle routing problems. We proposed the Green VRPTW-PF model, which takes the fuel consumption of acceleration and waiting on traffic lights into consideration. The model aims to determine the routes for a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles so that the sum of driver's wage, fuel consumption cost and emission cost is minimized. We generated a set of instances and solved them by a commercial solver. Numerical experiments show that: 1). path flexibility has a significant influence on the optimal solution when considering green issues; 2). it's not always the best choice to travel on the shortest path between two customers; 3). acceleration and waiting fuel consumption has little impact on objective function.