A static multi-vehicle bike repositioning problem: exact loading and unloading strategies and an enhanced artificial bee colony algorithm

Abstract

This study investigates a bike repositioning problem (BRP) that determines the routes of the repositioning vehicles and the loading and unloading quantities at each bike station to firstly minimize the positive deviation from the tolerance of total demand dissatisfaction and then service time. To reduce the computation time to solve the loading and unloading sub-problem of the BRP, this study examines a novel set of loading and unloading strategies and further proves them to be optimal for a given route. This set of strategies is then embedded into an enhanced artificial bee colony algorithm to solve the BRP. The results demonstrate the properties of the problem and the effectiveness of the solution method.