Optimization Models for Snowplow Routes and Depot Locations: A Real-World Implementation

Abstract

This study developed a series of strategies to reassess the service level of winter road maintenance (WRM) operations on the road network in Perth County, Ontario, Canada. These strategies include rearranging plow routes by sharing the material storage yards and optimizing their numbers and locations while considering operational and legislative constraints such as total circuit time, operating speeds, and the number of available trucks. A methodological framework was then formulated and solved by tackling four practical, yet challenging, tasks in a sequential manner. The first task was to identify existing plow routes and construct a detailed GIS database that was later used for benchmarking the current WRM operations. The second task involved the optimization of existing plow routes, while the third task focused on the optimization of plow routes and depot locations by amalgamating WRM operations of different municipalities within Perth County. The final task was to conduct a clean slate optimization to see the benefits of combining depots and route sharing. The optimization models developed were implemented to transform the existing maintenance operations networks to an optimized, integrated, and unified network of routes, with improved land use utilization for road maintenance yards. The framework then captured the impact of the service order of maintenance routes and arranged routing priority efficiently using the tabu search algorithm. The findings also revealed that, by sharing depots, the county could retire three depots and eight trucks while still meeting legislative requirements, thereby suggesting the potential for substantial monetary savings.