Article: Analysis of last-mile operations for mobility and logistics in rural areas Journal: World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research (WRITR) 2023 Vol.11 No.3 pp.235 - 257 Abstract: This research investigated the integration of bus lines with on-demand passenger transportation mixed with parcel delivery services for last-mile transportation. A mixed integer programming formulation is proposed for the optimisation problem of finding routes for the delivery vehicles, synchronising them with the bus lines, so that passengers and parcels use both modes in their trips. To validate the model, we used randomly generated instances based on a rural community and solved them using a commercial solver. We compare the performance of such a system against non and partially integrated scenarios and show that significant savings in drive time can be achieved, even when prioritising the passengers' perspectives. We also present a method to aid a decision-maker in visualising the trade-off of this prioritisation for the service operator. These findings suggest that the proposed approach might be particularly effective in rural areas, but these conclusions are highly dependent on the instances. Inderscience Publishers - linking academia, business and industry through research

Title: Analysis of last-mile operations for mobility and logistics in rural areas

Authors: Nara Quintela Begnini; Hiroshi Morita

Addresses: Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, Suita, 1-5 Yamadaoka 565-0871, Osaka, Japan ' Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Osaka University, Suita, 1-5 Yamadaoka 565-0871, Osaka, Japan

Abstract: This research investigated the integration of bus lines with on-demand passenger transportation mixed with parcel delivery services for last-mile transportation. A mixed integer programming formulation is proposed for the optimisation problem of finding routes for the delivery vehicles, synchronising them with the bus lines, so that passengers and parcels use both modes in their trips. To validate the model, we used randomly generated instances based on a rural community and solved them using a commercial solver. We compare the performance of such a system against non and partially integrated scenarios and show that significant savings in drive time can be achieved, even when prioritising the passengers' perspectives. We also present a method to aid a decision-maker in visualising the trade-off of this prioritisation for the service operator. These findings suggest that the proposed approach might be particularly effective in rural areas, but these conclusions are highly dependent on the instances.

Keywords: rural mobility; vehicle routing; integration to bus lines; public transit; mixed passenger and freight; hybrid transportation; last mile delivery; optimisation model.

DOI: 10.1504/WRITR.2023.132484

World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research, 2023 Vol.11 No.3, pp.235 - 257

Received: 06 Jul 2022
Accepted: 15 Nov 2022
Published online: 24 Jul 2023 *

Title: Analysis of last-mile operations for mobility and logistics in rural areas

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