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Regulations regarding drivers' working hours often have a big impact on total transit times, i.e., the time required for driving periods, breaks, and rest periods. Although of particular importance for many real-life applications, they have received only very little attention in the vehicle routing literature. This paper describes the new regulations for drivers' working hours in the European Union that entered into force in April 2007. According to the new regulations, motor carriers must organise the work of drivers in such a way that drivers are able to comply with the respective regulations and are made liable for infringements committed by the drivers. This paper shows how motor carriers can schedule driving periods, breaks, rest periods, and handling activities, and presents a large neighbourhood search algorithm capable of generating vehicle tours complying with the new regulations.
Key words: vehicle scheduling; vehicle routing; drivers' working hours; EC regulation 561/2006; large neighbourhood search
History: Received: August 2006; revision received: September 2007; accepted: November 2007. Published online in Articles in Advance April 7, 2008.
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Introduction
The consideration of drivers' working hours in vehicle scheduling and routing is of extraordinary importance to increase safety and punctuality in road freight transport. According to the regulations for drivers' working hours in the European Union (EU), motor carriers must organise the work of drivers in such a way that drivers are able to comply with the respective regulations. Due to the commitment to the just-in-time philosophy, punctuality is becoming an increasingly important level of service characteristic. Punctuality, however, can only be warranted if vehicle movements are planned considering all operational constraints-in particular, restrictions to drivers' working hours.
Vehicle telematics can be used to improve the availability of information regarding vehicle position as well as driving periods, breaks, and rest periods. This information can be used to estimate arrival times at customer locations and to plan vehicle movements if decision support and planning tools are capable of considering restrictions to drivers' working hours. Despite the importance of drivers' working hours, most of today's decision support and planning tools and most literature on vehicle scheduling and routing ignore respective regulations. In this paper we describe the new regulations for drivers' working hours in the European Union and show...