IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jorsoc/v65y2014i10p1465-1474.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The downhill plow problem with multiple plows

Author

Listed:
  • Benjamin Dussault

    (Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, University of Maryland, College Park, USA)

  • Bruce Golden

    (Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park, USA)

  • Edward Wasil

    (American University, Washington, USA)

Abstract

In winter, a common problem is to determine a set of routes for snow plows that minimize the maximum route length. Typically, this is modelled as an arc routing problem. We begin with a variant that is motivated by the fact that deadhead travel over streets is significantly faster than the time it takes to plow the street. We incorporate the use of multiple plows and the observation that, on steep streets, it is much more difficult, or impossible, to plow uphill. Therefore, we want to design routes that try to avoid plowing uphill on steep streets and take advantage of the faster traversal time for deadheading. We generalize this problem to include multiple plows and seek to minimize the maximum route length. We present a heuristic that generates solutions with costs that are very close to a lower bound.

Suggested Citation

  • Benjamin Dussault & Bruce Golden & Edward Wasil, 2014. "The downhill plow problem with multiple plows," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 65(10), pages 1465-1474, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:65:y:2014:i:10:p:1465-1474
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v65/n10/pdf/jors201383a.pdf
    File Function: Link to full text PDF
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jors/journal/v65/n10/full/jors201383a.html
    File Function: Link to full text HTML
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ávila, Thais & Corberán, Ángel & Plana, Isaac & Sanchis, José M., 2016. "A branch-and-cut algorithm for the profitable windy rural postman problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 249(3), pages 1092-1101.
    2. Brunner, Carlos & Giesen, Ricardo & Klapp, Mathias A. & Flórez-Calderón, Luz, 2021. "Vehicle routing problem with steep roads," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 1-17.
    3. Thibaut Vidal, 2017. "Node, Edge, Arc Routing and Turn Penalties: Multiple Problems—One Neighborhood Extension," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 65(4), pages 992-1010, August.
    4. Lu, Jiawei & Nie, Qinghui & Mahmoudi, Monirehalsadat & Ou, Jishun & Li, Chongnan & Zhou, Xuesong Simon, 2022. "Rich arc routing problem in city logistics: Models and solution algorithms using a fluid queue-based time-dependent travel time representation," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 143-182.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:65:y:2014:i:10:p:1465-1474. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.