Time-dependent vehicle routing of free pickup and delivery service in flight ticket sales companies based on carbon emissions

Abstract

The time-dependent pollution-routing problem of free pickup and delivery of passengers to the airport service (TDFPDS) is an extension of the time-dependent pollution-routing problems, arising in flight ticket sales companies for the service of free pickup and delivery of airline passengers to the airport. The problem consists of routing a fleet of vehicles in order to deliver a set of customers to the airport considering the traffic congestion, time window constraints, and maximum ride time constraints. The cost function includes fuel consumption and driver costs. We provide an analytical characterization of the optimal solutions for a fixed route and propose a novel heuristic for a given route based on the analysis of the illustrative examples. The heuristic algorithm is embedded into a set-partitioning model to produce high-quality routing plans. Finally, using wide variety of random instances, we present results on the computational performance of the heuristic and also on the impact of the congestion and the maximum ride time constraints.