Designing Network Partitions to Improve Maintenance Routing

Abstract

The problem of designing districts for winter maintenance operations for a state department of transportation (DOT) is considered in this study. Many maintenance activities, including snow removal, are routed to serve demands at the edges of the road network. Requirements of the routing operations must be taken into consideration while designing service districts. The problem of maintenance district design was formulated as a mixed integer linear program structured to integrate a simple yet effective route design strategy with the location allocation components associated with district design. Compared with earlier models, this model estimates deadhead (travel with no service provided) and required number of routes more accurately. Existing service districts are redesigned using this model, and the effectiveness of this methodology in designing maintenance districts that better support route design is demonstrated.