The Pickup And Delivery Problem With Time Windows And Scheduled Lines

Integrating freight flows with scheduled public transportation services creates attractive business opportunities as the same transportation needs can be met with fewer operating costs. The pickup and delivery problem with time windows and scheduled lines (PDPTW-SL) aims at routing a given set of vehicles to transport freight requests from their origins to their corresponding destinations, where the requests can use scheduled passenger transportation services as a part of their journeys. We describe the PDPTW-SL as an arc-based mixed-integer program. Computational results on a set of small-size instances provide a clear understanding of the benefits of using scheduled line services as a part of freight's journey.