Traffic problems

[Prakash]

Hi,

Is there any way to perform some setup to restrict or limit usage of specific roads during the day or particular time of the day while planning a tour?

Let me explain my problem,

I have added a map of Antwerp, so you can see the geography. Around Antwerp there is a (partial) ring road, the center is inside this ring road, the suburbs are outside the ring road. At the west of the city there is a river, there are only 2 tunnels connecting the 2 banks.
The sector consists of Antwerp center, the suburbs and the left bank (west). To make it easy, you can consider the sector being all the cities on the screenshot. The depots is in the suburbs.

Traffic: in the morning (before 9AM) the ring road is very often blocked. From the ring road, a lot of traffic is going towards the center, so this is also very slow. During the day, there are often delays using the tunnels to cross the river.

Expectations:
1. xTour should schedule first/few order in the suburbs, before entering the center. Thus avoiding the traffic on the ring road and towards the center.
2. xTour shouldn't combine orders from both banks on the same day. While the distance between the left bank and right bank is small, the time(including traffic) to go to the other bank is usually high.

I hope this explains in short the geography and the expectation/issues with the traffic.

Thanks in advance,
Prakash

[Bernd Welter]

Hello Prakash,

I see different challenges, expectations and approaches in your post.

First of all: each distance matrix reflects ONE specific snapshot of the road network and segment usage. Once a matrix cell is filled with a distance and period it is not updated (except for the garbage or LRU mechanism). So when a relation such as
(A = Antwerp inner city xy):(B = Antwerp outer ring xy) = (35mins / 15km) is computed this value will be applied to all vehicles using the same distance matrix. Whether a temporary tour looks like
DEPOT.A-B-............DEPOT (AB in the morning)
DEPOT........A-B......DEPOT (AB mid of day)
DEPOT.............A-B.DEPOT (AB end of day)
all the three schemes will use the 35mins from above.

Second topic: if you are aware of whether an individual order should be considered in the morning, mid of day or end of day you might try to use

• opening time windows
• tour section IDs (e.g. morning: TourSectionID= 2, mid: 3, end: 4)

to influence the sequences. But be careful: this will be treated as a hard (timewindows) or rather tough constraint (section ID).

best regards,
Bernd