Winter Road Maintenance System Design for Snow Plowing
Abstract
Winter road maintenance is critical to ensuring safety and mobility of transportation
systems in regions with heavy snowfall. Winter road maintenance system design involves
several inter-related decision making problems for different operations that are often
performed with expensive and limited resources. This study involves developing an
integrated solution methodology for depot location selection, district design, and vehicle
routing problems for winter road maintenance system design in the context of snow
plowing. The methodology allows decision makers to evaluate and compare different
system alternatives based on a number of service level related system design criteria. The
solution methodology is illustrated using the example of the road network of the Fargo
District of North Dakota's transportation system. Results indicate that the methodology can
be used as a decision making support tool for planning winter road maintenance operations.