The Community Mailbox Location-Routing Problem
Abstract
Canada Post has recently decided to phase out door-to-door delivery in urban areas in favour of building community mail boxes. This change in delivery method will require all households to walk to their nearest community mail box (CMB). Since operations costs will now largely be dependent on transportation costs, we aim to find locations for community mailboxes while also planning routes for the delivery of mail to these boxes. The purpose of the community mailbox locationrouting problem is to place a minimal number of CMBs within a reasonable walking distance to each house, and 1nd the shortest route for delivery. Our model uses a combination of heuristic methods including clustering and the sequential use of a location allocation problem and travelling salesman problem. We obtained successful results applying our model to a small neighbourhood in Delta, BC on a single test cluster.
References
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Gabor Nagy, S. S. (2006). Location-routing: Issues, models and methods. European Journal of Operation Research (2007).
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