Strategic Zone Design for a Bus-Based Passenger–Parcel Sharing Delivery System

This paper investigates the strategic zone design problem for a bus-based passenger–parcel sharing delivery system. In the envisioned system, parcels are first transported along an existing bus line and transshipped at bus stops, after which dedicated vehicles perform last-mile deliveries from bus stops to customers. By leveraging the underutilized capacity of existing bus services to support parcel distribution, the system contributes to a more resource-efficient and less truck-dependent urban logistics structure, thereby supporting sustainability in urban transportation. The problem is to partition the corridor-level service area into multiple contiguous service zones along the corridor under an m -nearest feasibility requirement. A nonlinear integer programming model is developed that jointly captures parcel and passenger perspectives. On the parcel side, the objective combines zone compactness, parcel-demand balance, and parcel-delivery-distance balance; on the passenger side, it minimizes passenger impact. In this way, the model balances logistics efficiency with social-equity and service-quality considerations and operationalizes sustainability through measurable planning indicators embedded in the objective function. A tailored adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm is proposed to exploit the specific problem structure and solve the model. Case studies based on a real-world bus line in Yancheng, China, illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and yield managerial insights into the choice of the number of zones, the influence of passenger-flow patterns, and the role of objective-function weights in shaping trade-offs between parcel delivery efficiency and equity, as well as passenger service quality.