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.