A branch-cut-and-price algorithm for the park-and-loop routing problem
摘要
The park-and-loop routing problem is a variant of the vehicle routing problem in which each driver can operate walking subtours while their truck is parked at a customer. A maximum walking distance per route and a maximum route duration are considered. This problem is particularly relevant in city logistics, where customers are clustered, and truck use can be reduced, thereby decreasing traffic congestion and emissions. We present a new exact branch-cut-and-price approach to solve the problem. In this approach, partial routes corresponding to walking subtours are enumerated using an efficient dynamic program. The problem is solved using a state-of-the-art exact branch-cut-and-price algorithm, which employs a bidirectional labeling algorithm for the pricing problem. Computational experiments demonstrate that the algorithm increases the size of optimally solved instances by 50% compared to the current state-of-the-art literature. This method solves all literature instances with up to 60 customers and 3 instances with 80 customers in at most 2 hours of computation time.