A Preliminary Investigation of Sustainable Urban Truck Routing Strategies Considering Cargo Weight and Vehicle Speed

摘要

Traditional (sustainable) VRP literature typically treats all stops equally in routing. In other words, routing is affected only by link/arc properties and node properties do not influence the link/arc properties. This treatment works reasonably well in passenger vehicle VRP, however, it does not apply to urban commercial vehicle routing when loading and unloading activities are performance at customer points (nodes). This research attempts to fill the literature gap by investigating the more realistic sustainable vehicle routing strategies by considering the joint effect of commercial vehicle load and speed on energy consumption or pollutant emissions or both. Moreover, idling energy consumption and emissions at stops (due to loading and unloading at the customer’s) will also be incorporated in the optimal routing strategies. Specifically, this paper presents the preliminary investigation towards filling that gap. Using a numerical example, this paper has demonstrated the noticeable (joint) effects of vehicle payload, vehicle speed, and dwell time on urban commercial vehicle PM2.5 emissions and energy consumption. Thus vehicle payload and speed could affect the visiting order of a distribution tour if minimizing the energy consumption or emissions is the objective.