Integrating Micro-Depot Freight Transport in Existing Public Transport Services

As conventional last-mile transport contributes to traffic congestion and pollution, new approaches to transporting freight in urban areas are needed. Integrating freight deliveries with existing public transport infrastructures, such as light rail, is a promising concept. However, it poses the challenge of offering a high service quality for passengers and freight. In this work, we consider a setting where freight originates from and is transshipped at several public transit stops that serve as micro-depots. These micro-depots have a limited storage capacity. Further, we consider a system that relies on shared vehicles, where a dedicated part of the capacity serves either as room to fasten freight containers or as a standing room for passengers. For this setting, we propose an optimization model that integrates the tactical scheduling of vehicles and the allocation of freight containers to vehicles. To solve realistically-sized instances, we propose an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic. We use this heuristic to evaluate the system’s sensitivity to the capacity of micro-depots and vehicles in various scenarios.