Synchronizing Parcel Delivery to Public Transport Networks in Urban Co-Modality Transportation

Co-modality transportation advocates using urban public transport to support urban freight operations. This study considers implementing the co-modality in a fixed-route transit network (bus) consisting of multiple lines following predetermined routes and schedules. We first develop a schedule-based parcel assignment model to synchronize parcel delivery to public transport networks. Then the synchronized co-modality transportation problem (SCTP) is formalized and solved by an arc-based meta-heuristic (HGA-VNS). The capability of the proposed algorithm is validated by an extensive computational study comparing with the exact approaches (CPLEX). The experimental analysis suggests that a reasonable infrastructure reconfiguration can help improve utilization and save costs. In addition, we conduct a case study using real-world transit data in a city to demonstrate the potential handling capacity of the proposed co-modality transportation