Sustainable vehicle routing: Strategies for congestion management and refueling scheduling

Nowadays there is a huge social and environmental pressure to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), especially in transportation sector. In the traditional transportation literature, the objective was to minimize a number of vehicles and travelled distance. However, in new transportation (e.g., sustainable vehicle routing (VRP)), the economic profit is not a primary objective. This paper mainly concerns with introducing vehicle transportation and routing model for alternative fuel vehicles (AFV) (e.g., hybrid, electric and fuel cell vehicles) minimizing the energy and fuel consumption, in which GHG emissions are primary objectives. An alternative fuel station (AFS) infrastructure is analyzed and the limitations of refueling for AFVs are considered in the model. Furthermore, some strategies are carried out and modeled to avoid congestion during traffic peak hours. Two most remarkable metaheuristic algorithms along with a partial heuristic method and an exact algorithm for solving small-scale problems are proposed. Finally, a sensitivity analysis is presented to obtain the reliable results in a short time period.