Study on Optimal Routes of Multimodal Transport under Time Window Constraints

Abstract

In actual transportation processes, besides time windows requirements, waiting departure time caused by fixed schedules, also has an important influence on optimal transport scheme for multimodal transport. In order to choose, scientifically and rationally, routes of multimodal transport network and modes of transport, an optimal route selection model is established for minimizing total costs under constraints of mixed time windows. Considering the optimization efficiency brought by the chicken rank system, the chicken swarm optimization (CSO) is used to solve relevant examples with schedule constraints and no limited schedule. Optimization results show that under same time window constraints, costs with schedule constraints does not increase comparing that with no schedule constraints. In the result, effects of time window constraints and fixed schedule should be fully considered in actual determination of multimodal transport scheme.