Approach to Fleet Contracting for Snow Plowing Operations
Publication: Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 20, Issue 2
Abstract
Ensuring a transportation system’s operational efficiency and effectiveness is a challenge particularly for road maintenance agencies in winter times. Winter road maintenance involves snow plowing and chemicals/abrasives spreading, and both are performed by using a number of specific types of trucks. However, most departments of transportation do not maintain sufficient trucks and hence they may resort to contract additional equipment to make up for the shortfall. Based on the Newsvendor problem, this study develops a novel stochastic model to optimize the number of plows that should be contracted prior to a snow season to minimize the total cost, considering the frequency and distribution of various intensities of snow events, geometric condition of the roadways and traffic speeds. A solution methodology based on stochastic modeling is proposed and applied to a numerical example utilizing actual snow data. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis is performed to evaluate the impact of model parameters on the optimum solution.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
This research was partially supported by the New Jersey Department of Transportation. The support and the provided data are greatly appreciated. (Nevertheless, that does not mean the endorsement of the findings.) The authors also are indebted to anonymous referees for their insightful comments that helped in sharpening the manuscript.
References
Abdel-Malek, L., and Montanari, R. (2005). “An analysis of the multi-product Newsboy problem with a budget constraint.” Int. J. Prod. Econ., 97(3), 296–307.
Abdel-Malek, L., Montanari, R., and Morales, L. C. (2004). “Exact, approximate, and generic iterative models for the multi-product Newsboy problem with budget constraint.” Int. J. Prod. Econ., 91(2), 189–198.
Chien, S. I., Gao, S., and Meegoda, J. N. (2013). “Fleet size estimation for snow plowing operation considering road geometry, weather and traffic speed.” J. Transp. Eng., 903–912.
Choi, T. (2012). Handbook of Newsvendor problems: Models, extensions and applications, Springer, New York.
Edward, P. C. (1985). “Budgeting costs of nursing in a hospital.” Manage. Sci., 31(5), 608–621.
Erlebacher, S. J. (2000). “Optimal and heuristic solutions for the multi-item Newsvendor problem with a single capacity constraint.” Prod. Oper. Manage., 9(3), 303–318.
Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). (2011). “National statistics.” 〈http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/Main/index.aspx〉 (May 15, 2013).
Hadley, G., and Whitin, T. M. (1963). Analysis of inventory systems, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
Hayman, R. W., and Howard, C. A. (1972). “Maintenance station location though operations research at the Wyoming state highway dept.” Highway Res. Rec., 391, 17–30.
Herer, Y. T., and Harel, G. H. (1998). “Determining the size of the temporary workforce: An inventory modeling approach.” Human Resour. Plann., 21(2), 20–32.
Khouja, M. (1999). “The single-period (News-vendor) problem: Literature review and suggestions for future research.” Int. J Manage. Sci., 27, 537–553.
Littlewood, K. (2005). “Forecasting and control of passenger bookings.” J. Revenue Pricing Manage., 4(2), 111–123.
Luo, S., Cakanyildirim, M., and Kasilingam, R. G. (2009). “Two-dimensional cargo overbooking models.” Eur. J. Oper. Res., 197(3), 862–883.
Missouri Dept. of Transportation. (2011). Optimizing winter/snow removal operations in MoDOT St. Louis district—includes outcome based evaluation of operations, National Technical Information Center, Cmr1200—007, Springfield, VA.
New Jersey Dept. of Labor and Workforce Development (NJLWD). (2003). “New Jersey state prevailing wage act.” 〈http://lwd.dol.state.nj.us/labor/wagehour/lawregs/prevailing_wage_law.html〉 (May 30, 2013).
New Jersey Dept. of Transportation (NJDOT). (2011). “Contract agreement for snow plowing & hauling services.” 〈http://www.nj.gov/transportation/about/winter〉 (May 30, 2013).
New York State Dept. of Transportation (NYSDOT). (2006). “Highway maintenance guidelines: Snow and ice control.” 〈https://www.dot.ny.gov/divisions/operating/oom/transportation-maintenance/transportation-maintenance-general〉 (Apr. 14, 2013).
Ohio Dept. of Transportation. (2011). “Snow and ice practices.” 〈http://www.dot.state.oh.us/Divisions/Operations/Maintenance/SnowandIce〉 (May 30, 2013).
Olivares, M., Terwiesch, C., and Cassorla, L. (2008). “Structural estimation of the newsvendor model: An application to reserving operating room time.” Manage. Sci., 54(1), 41–55.
Perrier, N., Langevin, A., and Campbell, J. F. (2007). “A survey of models and algorithms for winter road maintenance. Part IV: Vehicle routing and fleet sizing for plowing and snow disposal.” Comput. Oper. Res., 34(1), 258–294.
Salazar-Aguilar, M. A., Langevin, A., and Laporte, G. (2012). “Synchronized arc routing for snow plowing operations.” Comput. Oper. Res., 39(7), 1432–1440.
Ungerer, R. P. (1989). Decision models for winter highway maintenance, New York State Dept. of Transportation, Albany, NY.
Vairaktarakis, G. L. (2000). “Robust multi-item Newsboy models with a budget constraint.” Int. J. Prod. Econ., 66(3), 213–226.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Infrastructure Systems
Volume 20 • Issue 2 • June 2014
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 9, 2013
Accepted: Nov 13, 2013
Published online: Feb 3, 2014
Published in print: Jun 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Jul 3, 2014
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.