Vol. 0, No. 0, xxxxxxxx 2012, pp.

115
ISSN 1059-1478|EISSN 1937-5956|12|0|0001

DOI 10.1111/j.1937-5956.2012.01338.x
2012 Production and Operations Management Society

Analysis of Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in

Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing
O. Jabali
HEC Montreal and CIRRELT, 3000 chemin de la Cote-Sainte-Catherine, H3T 2A7, Montreal, Canada, Ola.Jabali@cirrelt.ca

T. Van Woensel, A.G. de Kok

Department of Industrial Engineering and Innovation Sciences, Operations, Planning, Accounting and Control, Technische Universiteit
Eindhoven, P. O. Box 513, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, T.v.Woensel@tue.nl, A.G.d.Kok@tue.nl

ue to the growing concern over environmental issues, regardless of whether companies are going to voluntarily
incorporate green policies in practice, or will be forced to do so in the context of new legislation, change is foreseen
in the future of transportation management. Assigning and scheduling vehicles to service a pre-determined set of clients
is a common distribution problem. Accounting for time-dependent travel times between customers, we present a model
that considers travel time, fuel, and CO2 emissions costs. Specifically, we propose a framework for modeling CO2 emissions in a time-dependent vehicle routing context. The model is solved via a tabu search procedure. As the amount of
CO2 emissions is correlated with vehicle speed, our model considers limiting vehicle speed as part of the optimization.
The emissions per kilometer as a function of speed are minimized at a unique speed. However, we show that in a timedependent environment this speed is sub-optimal in terms of total emissions. This occurs if vehicles are able to avoid running into congestion periods where they incur high emissions. Clearly, considering this trade-off in the vehicle routing
problem has great practical potential. In the same line, we construct bounds on the total amount of emissions to be saved
by making use of the standard VRP solutions. As fuel consumption is correlated with CO2 emissions, we show that reducing emissions leads to reducing costs. For a number of experimental settings, we show that limiting vehicle speeds is
desired from a total cost perspective. This namely stems from the trade-off between fuel and travel time costs.

Key words: vehicle routing problems; time-dependent travel times; CO2 emissions; green logistics
History: Received: July 2009; Accepted: October 2010 by Luk van Wassenhove, after 2 revisions.

problems where Green Logistics is relevant. Corbett

and Kleindorfer (2001a, 2001b) discussed the integration of environmental management in operations
management. Kleindorfer et al. (2001) did so in the
context of sustainable operations management. Lee
and Klassen (2008) mapped factors that initiated and
improved environmental capabilities in small- and
medium-sized enterprises over time.
European road freight transport uses considerable
amounts of energy (Baumgartner et al. 2008). Vanek
and Campbell (1999) note that predictions are that the
United Kingdom will meet the Kyoto targets. However, they highlight that within the period from 1985
until 1995, energy use across all sectors grew only by
7% while transport energy use grew by 31%. Similar
findings were observed by Leonardi and Baumgartner (2004). They state that in the period 19912001
road freight traffic in Germany increased by 40%.
Moreover, in 2001 traffic was responsible for about
6% of total CO2 emissions in Germany. More substantial CO2 increases are observed in India by Singha
et al. (2004), where the CO2 emissions from road

1. Introduction
The ever-growing concern over greenhouse gases
(GHG) has led many countries to take policy actions
aiming at emissions reductions. Most notable is the
Kyoto Protocol, which requires countries to reduce a
basket of the six major GHG by the year 2012 by 5.2%
on average (compared to their 1990 emission levels).
Next to this, a number of other initiatives have
emerged particularly to control CO2 emissions. For
example, more than 12,000 industrial plants in the EU
are subjected to CO2 caps, enabling the trade of emissions rights between parties. For a comprehensive
survey of GHG trade market models, the reader is
referred to Springer (2004).
The importance of environmental issues is continuously translated into regulations, which potentially
have a tangible impact on supply chain management.
As a consequence, there has been an increasing
amount of research on the intersection between logistics and environmental factors. Sbihi and Eglese
(2007) identified potential combinatorial optimization
1

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP
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transport in the year 2000 have increased by almost

400% compared to 1985. In the context of examining
scenarios for GHG, Yang et al. (2008) mention that in
California the transportation sector accounted for
over 40% of GHG for 2006, making it by far the largest
contributor. Baumgartner et al. (2008) acknowledge
that new vehicle designs are more efficient in terms of
emissions. However, this is outweighed by the transport growth rate in the EU. Ericsson et al. (2006) mention that CO2, which is directly related to the
consumption of carbon-based fuel, is regarded as one
of the most serious threats to the environment
through the greenhouse effect. Globally, transportation accounts for about 21% of CO2 emissions. In the
same spirit, CO2 is identified as the most important
greenhouse gas in the Netherlands, as it accounted
for 80% of total emissions in 1995 (see e.g., Kramer et
al. 1999). Thus, there is a clear necessity to control
CO2 emissions.
Road transport accounts for a large portion of CO2
emissions, of which goods transport constitutes a
sizeable portion. Thus, there is a need to address environmental concerns in the context of goods transport.
Carrier companies may voluntarily adopt green policies if this is aligned with profitability. This could be
in the form of GHG trading mechanisms, or when
CO2 becomes a taxable commodity. Another reason
for adopting green policies is the marketing potential
of a greener company image, for example, controlling
the carbon footprint. Furthermore, new regulations
might force companies to change practices. It is worth
mentioning that the department for environment,
food and rural affairs in the United Kingdom values
the social cost of carbon between 35 and 140 per
tonne. In essence, pricing carbon emissions leads to
an assessment of its economic impact and regulations
might be formed accordingly. In conclusion, either for
exogenous or endogenous reasons, change is anticipated in transportation management because of environmental factors. We argue that logistics service
providers should contemplate how to deal with these
issues.
The focus of this article is on incorporating CO2related considerations in road freight distribution,
specifically in the framework of the Vehicle Routing
Problem (VRP). CO2 emissions and fuel consumption
both depend on the vehicle speed, which changes
throughout the day due to congestion. Thus, it is relevant to study the problem in conjunction with timedependent travel times, i.e., where the travel time
depends on the time of day at which a distance is
traversed. Time-dependency is modeled by partitioning the planing horizon into free flow speed periods
and periods with congestion, that is, lower speeds.
We introduce a new variant of the VRP that accounts
for travel time, fuel, and CO2 emissions costs. This

results in the Emissions-based Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem, denoted by E-TDVRP. The
E-TDVRP builds on the possibility that carrier companies limit the speed of their vehicles. Thus, the vehicle
speed limit is explicitly part of the optimization. The
traditional Time-Dependent Vehicle Routing Problem
(TDVRP) optimizes exclusively on travel times and
does not consider limiting vehicle speed. However,
we show that when accounting for fuel, travel time,
and emissions, controlling vehicle speed is desirable
from a total cost point of view.
The E-TDVRP is clearly a complex problem, as in
addition to the complexity of the TDVRP, it also
determines the free flow speed. This implies that one
needs to allocate customers to vehicles, determine the
exact order in which customers are visited, and set
the free flow speed. The free flow speed impacts the
resulting travel time function of each arc, and in
return, affects the moment vehicles go into congestion. We assume that the congestion speed remains
constant, as it is imposed by traffic conditions. This
leads to a situation where speeds can be controlled in
particular time periods of the day, that is exclusively
in free flow periods. The E-TDVRP can be reduced to
two sub-problems: one where only the CO2 emissions
are taken into account in the optimization (that is,
a pure environmental model) and one where only
travel times are considered (i.e., a pure logistical cost
model). As such, we study the trade-off between minimizing CO2 emissions as opposed to minimizing
total travel times. In addition, we develop bounds for
the potential reduction in CO2 emissions. These
bounds are based on solutions of the standard timeindependent VRP. Since most optimization tools used
in industry consider time-independent travel times,
such bounds can concretely aid decision makers in
evaluating the maximum reduction in emissions.
The remainder of the article is organized as follows,
Section 2 reviews the relevant literature. Section 3
describes the E-TDVRP model. It also introduces
bounds for the potential savings in CO2 emissions.
The solution method is discussed in section 4. The
experimental settings and results are presented in section 5. Finally, section 6 highlights the main findings
and indicates directions for future research.

2. Literature Review
Van Woensel et al. (2001) highlighted the value of
traffic flow information in relation to emissions. Their
results showed that calculating emissions under constant speed assumptions can be misleading, with
differences of up to 20% in CO2 emissions on an average day for gasoline vehicles and 11% for diesel vehicles. During congested periods of the day these
differences rose 40%. Similar results were shown by

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Palmer (2008), for a number of roads. Such results are

motivated mainly by the fact that CO2 emissions are
proportional to fuel consumption (Kirby et al. 2000),
and thus are speed dependent. The relation between
emissions and vehicle speed leads to the study of the
VRP problem in a time-dependent framework. In
what follows, we first discuss the literature concerning the TDVRP, and then review the literature dealing
with routing and emissions.
Assigning and scheduling vehicles with a limited
capacity to service a set of clients with known
demand, is a problem faced by numerous carrier companies. It has been extensively researched in the literature as the well-known VRP. For a comprehensive
review, the reader is referred to Laporte (2007). In its
most standard version, the problem deals with minimizing costs subject to demand satisfaction and vehicle capacity constraints. Each customer is visited by a
single vehicle, each vehicle starts and ends its route at
the depot. The relevance of the VRP to real-life practice coupled with the hard nature of the problem has
attracted much research. To model reality more accurately, numerous features have been added to the
problem. One of these is including speed changes
over the day, in an attempt to account for traffic congestion experienced in certain periods of the day.
Lately, a number of researchers incorporated timedependent travel times between customers into the
VRP, which gave rise to the TDVRP. The objective of
the TDVRP, in most cases, is similar to that of the
VRP, that is, minimizing costs (Hill and Benton 1992).
However, in the TDVRP the travel time cost depends
on the time of day a distance is traversed. Modeling
time-dependency is mostly done by associating different speeds to a number of time zones within the planning horizon. Malandraki and Daskin (1992) motivate
variability in travel time by random events, such as
accidents and cyclic temporal variations in traffic
flow. They propose a mixed integer programming
formulation for the TDVRP. Malandraki and Dial
(1996) propose a dynamic programming formulation
to solve the time-dependent Traveling Salesman
Problem (TSP). However, both these articles modeled
travel times by discrete step functions where travel
times are associated with different time zones.
Although this modeling approach does capture variability in travel times, it enables the undesired effect
of surpassing. This effect implies that a vehicle
departing at a certain time might surpass another
vehicle that started traveling earlier. This limitation
was discussed by Fleischmann et al. (2004), Ichoua
et al. (2003), Nannicini et al. (2010), and Van Woensel
et al. (2008). All these articles model time-dependencies complying with the First-In First-Out (FIFO)
assumption, which does not allow for surpassing.
This is done by using appropriate piecewise linear

functions for travel times. In this article, we adopt travel time functions similar to the ones used by Ichoua
et al. (2003), and thus adhere to the FIFO assumption.
Ichoua et al. (2003) modeled the TDVRP by partitioning the day into three speed zones, where the
speed differences due to congestion were determined
by different factors of the free flow speeds. The travel
time profiles were constructed by piecewise linear
functions. Fleischmann et al. (2004) discuss a general
framework for integrating time-dependent travel
times in a number of VRP algorithms. Furthermore,
they provide an overview of traffic information systems from which data can be collected. Modeling of
time-dependent travel times would benefit from these
data. Based on empirical traffic data, queueing models were developed by Van Woensel (2003) to model
congestion, where the model parameters were set to
incorporate different traffic flows and weather conditions. The analysis of the data resulted in average
speeds for different time zones (see also Van Woensel
and Vandaele 2006). These speeds were later used in
Van Woensel et al. (2008) to solve the TDVRP with
tabu search. Jung and Haghani (2001) proposed a
modified genetic algorithm to solve the TDVRP.
Not much research has been conducted on the VRP
under minimizing emissions. Cairns (1999) studied
the environmental impact of grocery home delivery,
but this was done by converting distance into emissions, irrespective of speed changes. The effect of
speed changes is incorporated in the work of Palmer
(2008). He studied emissions in the context of grocery
home delivery vehicles, where real traffic data were
used to derive fuel consumption and emissions. A
similar detailed methodology was used by Ericsson
et al. (2006). Both Palmer (2008) and Ericsson et al.
(2006) considered CO2 minimization as an optimization criteria. Bektas and Laporte (2011) introduced the
pollution routing problem where they accounted for
the amount of greenhouse emissions, fuel, travel
times, and their costs. The authors present a comprehensive formulation of the problem and solve moderately sized instances. Scott et al. (2010) investigated
the influence of the minimization of CO2 emissions on
the solutions to shortest path and traveling salesman
problems in freight delivery applications. Real life
examples are studied using the road network of
Scotland. In a more aggregate view, Sugawara and
Niemeier (2002) presented an emissions-based trip
assignment optimization model. They also explored
potential emission reduction under the assumption
that drivers choose emission minimizing routes.
Assessing vehicle emissions can be very complex, as
emissions depend on factors such as the age of the
vehicle, engine state, engine size, speed, type of fuel,
and weight (Taniguchi et al. 2001). For our study, we
use speed emission functions from the MEET model

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP
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(European Commission 1999). In this article, we focus

on CO2 and leave other pollutants for additional
research.

3. Description of E-TDVRP
This section starts with a complete description of the
E-TDVRP model and details the most relevant parts
of this model. Section 3.1 elaborates on the computation of the travel times. Section 3.2 explains the computation of the CO2 emissions and fuel consumptions.
Finally, in section 3.3 the bounds on CO2 emissions
are presented.
In general, the VRP is described by a complete
directed graph G = (V,A) where V = {0,1,,n} is a set
of vertices and A = {(i,j):i<>j V} is the set of directed arcs. The vertex 0 denotes the depot; the rest of
the vertices represent customers. For each customer,
a non-negative demand qi is given (q0 0). A nonnegative cost cij is associated with each arc (i,j). The
objective is to find, for a given number of vehicles N,
the minimum costs where the following conditions
hold: every customer is visited exactly once by one
vehicle, all vehicle routes start and end at the depot,
and every route has a total demand not exceeding the
vehicle capacity Q. This definition is valid for the
E-TDVRP model presented in this study.
The E-TDVRP differs from the VRP as it considers
time-dependent travel times. Furthermore, it considers fuel and emissions costs. The objective function of
the E-TDVRP is the sum of all these costs. Limiting
the free flow speed of the vehicles is examined in this
problem. Therefore, in addition to the routing solution the E-TDVRP has a decision variable vf corresponding to the upper limit of the vehicle speed. The
speed limit vf is considered a tactical choice of the carrier company. Thus, vf is imposed on all vehicles, that
is, all routes have the same limit.
We define a solution as a set S with s routes
fR1 ; R2 ; . . .; Rs g where s  N, Rr 0; . . .; i; . . .; 0,
that is, each route begins and ends at the depot. We
write i 2 Rr , if the vertex i  1 is part of the route Rr
(each vertex belongs to exactly one route). We write
i; j 2 Rr , if i and j are two consecutive vertices in Rr .
An E-TDVRP solution is defined by the solution set S
coupled with a vehicle speed limit vf .
A solution (S; vf ) results in travel times TTS; vf
and emissions ES; vf . The computation of TTS; vf is
explained in section 3.1. The computation of ES; vf
is discussed in section 3.2.
We define three cost factors in the E-TDVRP: the
hourly cost of a driver (with a cost of a /hour), the
cost of fuel (costing b /liter), and the cost of CO2
emissions (c /kg). Since fuel consumption is directly
related to CO2 emission, we use the factor of h (equal
1
to 2:7
liter/kg) for converting CO2 emissions into fuel

consumption, similar to Palmer (2008). The objective

function for E-TDVRP is given by Equation (1).
FS; vf ; a; b; c aTTS; vf bh cES; vf

The first part of the objective function considers the

travel time costs. The second part considers the composite costs combining fuel and emissions. We explicitly consider both, as the cost parameters for fuel (b)
and emissions (c) are different.
The E-TDVRP can be reduced into two special cases.
Setting a to zero the model minimizes solely the costs
of fuel and CO2, which is equivalent to minimizing
ES; vf , with an objective function value FS; vf ; 0; b; c.
Similarly, setting both b and c to zero results in a
model that minimizes TTS; vf , with an objective function value FS; vf ; a; 0; 0. These special cases facilitate a
trade-off analysis showing the additional travel time
required to obtain minimal CO2 emissions.
For completeness, we summarize the speed-related
notation we will use in the remainder of this section:
 vf : The speed limit set in E-TDVRP.
 vc : The congestion speed imposed by traffic.
 v : The speed that yields the optimal CO2 emission per km value.
 vf : The optimal speed for ES; vf .
 vh : The upper bound value of vf .
 v0 : The speed used for computing the upper
bound on ES; vf .
3.1. Determining TTS; vf
The time-dependency of travel times throughout the
planning horizon, is in essence, driven by changing
speeds in different time zones. We subject all links to
given speed profiles. This stems from the notion that
most motorways, on average, follow the same pattern
of having morning and evening congestion periods
(see Ichoua et al. [2003] for a similar reasoning). Moreover, collecting data for each link and each time zone
is infeasible from an operational standpoint.
Figure 1 provides an illustration of how speeds are
translated into travel time profiles. The left side
depicts a speed profile that starts with a congestion
speed vc until time a. After time a the vehicle can
travel at free flow speed vf . Subjecting a given
distance d to the speed profile on the left side of the
figure results in the travel time profile on the right
side of Figure 1. Note that while the x-axis for the speed
profile is the time of day, the x-axis for the travel time
figure is starting time. For a given distance d and for
every starting time, the figure on the right provides
the travel time. The main intuition for modeling the
profile is that during the first period (up to a  TTc ) it
takes TTc time units to traverse d since, throughout
that period the vehicle will be driving with speed vc

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP

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Figure 1 The Conversion of Speed into Travel Times

along the entire link. However, starting from time

a  TTc up to point a, the vehicle will be in the transient zone, where it will start traversing the link with
speed vc and the remainder with speed vf . Starting at
point a the speed will remain constant at vf with the
travel time equaling TTf . Thus, the travel time is a
continuous piecewise linear function over the starting
times.
The linearity in the transient zone stems from the
stepwise speed change which imposes different
speeds over time. The slope can be defined as

TTf  TTc
TTc .

d
d
vc and TTf with vf , we obtain
vc  vf
vf , which is independent of

By substituting TTc with

that the slope is equal to

d. However, the intersection with the travel time axis is

a function of the distance and it is equal to

vf  vc
a
vf

vdf .

Therefore, the travel time function between customers i and j depends on the distance dij between these
customers. We define g(t) as the travel time function
associated with any starting time t for Figure 1.
8
if t  a  TTc
c
< vTT
vf vc
c vf
t vf a TTf
if a  TTc \t\a
gt
: vf
TTf
if t  a
For starting times within 0; a  TTc the FIFO is
satisfied since the speed associated with these starting
times is constant. Given two starting times within this
interval t and t + D, both will arrive TTc time units
after their departure. Similarly, FIFO holds for starting
times after a. The line in the transient zone a  TTc ; a
can be viewed as a consequence of the FIFO assumption as well. Given two starting times t and t + D, both
in the transient zone, the arrival times are t + g(t) and
t + D + g(t + D), respectively, the difference between
v v
the arrival times of t + D and t is D c vf f D [ 0.
Thus, the FIFO assumption holds in the transient zone.
Note that in a speed decreasing situation the FIFO
assumption holds even for step travel time changes.
Nonetheless, for consistency, speed drops are constructed
exactly in the same manner as speed increases. We further
note that the construction of travel times is equivalent
to integrating the distance over the different speeds.

The proposed model is convenient since it requires

speed values and the points in time at which the
speed changes. TTijt represents the travel time
between node i and node j when starting at time t.
The starting time t belongs to a time zone from the set
ft1 ; t2 ; . . .; tk g. The travel time is computed depending
on the specific zone that t belongs to. Equation (2)
considers the total travel time associated with a solution S and vf .
XX X
TTijt
2
TTS; vf
r

i;j2Rr

3.2. Determining E(S,vf)

In this article, we use emission functions provided in
the MEET report (European Commission 1999). The
function h(v) provides the emissions in grams per kilometer for speed v. Equation (3) depicts the amount of
emissions per km, given that a vehicle is at speed v.
1
1
1
hv K av bv2 cv3 d e 2 f 3
v
v
v

The coefficients (K,a,,f) differ per vehicle type and

size. Here, we focus on heavy duty trucks weighing
3242 tons. The coefficients for the CO2 emissions
for this specific vehicle category are (K,a,b,c,d,e,f) =
(1576, 17.6, 0, 0.00117, 0, 36067, 0). Figure 2 depicts
this CO2 (kg/km) emissions function. This function has a unique minimum and we define v as the
integer speed which achieves the lowest CO2 emissions (v 71 km/hour).
Figure 2 CO2 Emissions vs. Speed

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We denote the amount of CO2 emissions in grams

produced by traversing arc (i,j) at time t with a free
flow speed vf by Eijt vf . The average speeds are
used to calculate the emissions per km by Equation
(3). Multiplication of emissions per km by distances
traversed yields the total amount of CO2 emissions.
We define Xdij ; t; vf  as the average speed for traversing arc (i,j) when leaving i at time zone t, with
speed limit vf . Consequently, Eijt vf is given by
Equation (4).


Eijt vf h Xdij ; t; vf  dij
4
The objective function for term ES; vf is defined in
Equation (5) summing the total CO2 emissions produced by the different routes r in solution S with
speed limit vf .
XX X
Eijt vf
5
ES; vf
r

i;j2Rr

Both from a practical and an optimization point, we

choose to work with integer speeds. Optimizing on
ES; vf implies then finding an optimal integer free
flow speed applied to all routes r in S. The dependence of Eijt on the speeds associated with dij makes
the free flow speed vf a decision variable. We emphasize that limiting the speed of a vehicle means that in
free flow the vehicles speed is limited. However, in
congestion the vehicle is restricted by the congestion
speed. In essence, while congestion zones can be seen
as constraints, in free flow zones the maximum speed
is decided upon.
Modifying the speed profile affects the travel time
profiles. As explained in section 1, the change of
speed at point a starts affecting the travel times
already at point a  TTc . If there is a speed drop at
point a from a certain free flow speed vf to a congestion speed vc , travel times for a given distance d will
start to increase if it is traversed after time a  vdf . If
the free-flow speed is decreased, the travel time profile is affected, since the vehicle will start experiencing
congestion at earlier starting times. We demonstrate
the effect of free flow speed on the total emissions

produced with the example depicted in Figure 3. Let

vc 40 km/hour and consider two options for free
flow speed: v1 71 km/hour, and v2 72 km/hour,
with starting time 200 and a = 500 (in minutes). Setting the free flow speed to v1 produces 2.8 kg more
CO2 emissions than setting it to v2 . Moreover, setting
the free flow speed to v1 results in an increase of
15 minutes in travel times, with respect to v2 .
Considering optimizing on ES; vf , that is, only
on the amount of emissions, let the optimal speed
be vf . Proposition 1 shows that only a sub-set of
potential speeds need to be taken into account for the
ES; vf optimization. This proposition makes it possible to considerably reduce the search space for this
problem.
PROPOSITION 1. Given vc \ v , there exists a vh [ v
such that hvc hvh and v  vf  vh .
For the case of h(v) being convex having a unique
minimum as is in the case of the CO2 emission function considered, Proposition 1 is straightforward to
show. Since vc is smaller than v there exists another
speed vh which is higher than v such that hvc
hvh . We show that vc \ vf \ vh for the setting in
question.
PROOF. Arguing by contradiction, assume that
vf [ vh . The shape of the emission per km function
implies that hvf [ hvh hvc . In such a case,
being in free flow zones, that is, where the speed is
set to vf , will produce higher emissions than in congestion. Any ~v 2 vc ; vh  will produce less emissions
since h~v \ hvf and thus vf is not optimal.
Again by contradiction, assume that vc \ vf \ v .
For any ~v 2 vc ; v  there exists a ^v [ v such that
h^v h~v. Since for ^v the total time spent in congestion will be lower than that for ~v, we conclude
that v \ vf \ vh .
h
As previously mentioned, we only consider integer
values for speeds. Thus, vh is rounded up to the nearest integer value.

Figure 3 Example for Two Free Flow Speeds

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3.3. Bounds for ES; vf

The ES; vf on its own is a difficult problem to
handle: one needs to find a solution in a time-dependent setting in combination with setting the free flow
speed. In this section we present bounds using the
solutions of the standard VRP (i.e., time-independent). Throughout the years various solution techniques have been developed to tackle this problem.
Moreover, from a practical standpoint, most carrier
companies developed software solutions for the standard VRP. Hence, bounds based on these basic VRP
solutions may be easily computed in practice as well.
The lower bound is realized by traversing the total
distance in the VRP solution with a speed v , since
this implies the minimum distance traversed using
the optimal emissions speed. In essence, the upper
bound can be constructed by subjecting the VRP solutions to a speed profile with a single speed drop, similar to Profile I in Figure 4. However, our TDVRP
setting is similar to Profile II in Figure 4. For a given
distance to be traversed starting at time zero, optimizing CO2 emissions under Profile II would generate
results superior or equivalent to the same optimization under profile I. For minimizing emissions, the
optimal performance under profile I is an upper
bound on the performance of Profile II. Thus, we
construct an upper bound on the total CO2 emissions
by assuming a single speed decrease that is outperformed by a profile consisting of a speed drop
followed by a speed increase.
We analyze the case of subjecting the VRP solutions
to Profile I. We denote the distance of an arbitrary
route by d. We distinguish two cases:
(i) If the vehicle is not fast enough to avoid congestion, that is, v < d/a, then the total emissions are given by the emissions in free flow
h(v)av plus the emissions in congestion which
are hvc d  av.
(ii) If the vehicle travels fast enough to avoid congestion, that is, v  d/a, then the total emissions would simply be given by h(v) times the
covered distance d.

According to the above distinction, define E1 d; v

and E2 d; v as follows:
E1 d; v hvav hvc d  av
E2 d; v hvd:
Then, total emissions as a function of distance d can
be written as a function of speed:

Ed v :

E1 d; v
E2 d; v

if v 2 0; da
if v 2 da ; 1

In our case E1 d; v, E2 d; v, and h(v) are convex and

have a unique minimum. The problem of finding an
optimal speed involves finding the minimum of Ed :
(

min min E1 d; v;
v20;da

min E2 d; v :

v2da;1

LEMMA 1. There exists a universal speed v0 [ v such

that for all a,d > 0 there exists a unique solution vf to
problem (6) given by:
8 
if d  av
<v

if av \d\av0
vf d=a
: 0
v
if d  av0 .
PROOF. E1 d; v has a unique optimal v0 . This can be
easily seen by differentiation
@E1 d; v
ah0 vv hv  hvc :
@v
As earlier observed E2 d; v has a unique optimal
speed v . Furthermore E1 d; d=a E2 d; d=a, so
that Ed is continuous. Now, since by convexity we
know that
 E1 is decreasing for v \ v0 and increasing for
v [ v0 ,

Figure 4 Speed Profiles for the Bounds on E-TDVRP

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP

Production and Operations Management 0(0), pp. 115, 2012 Production and Operations Management Society

 E2 is decreasing for v \ v and increasing for

v [ v ,
it is sufficient to put together E1 and E2 , distinguishing between the following three cases.

sion makers to easily assess the maximal reduction in

CO2 emissions. Furthermore, these bounds are used
to validate the proposed solution procedure.

Case i : d  av .

4. Solution Method

8
< E1 v; decreasing
Ed v E2 v; decreasing
:
E2 v; increasing

if v  d=a
if d=a\v\v
if v  v

so the minimum value is reached when v v .

Case ii : av \ d \ av0 .

E1 v; decreasing
if v  d=a
Ed v
E2 v; increasing
if d=a\v
so the minimum value is reached when v = d/a.
Case iii : av0  d.
8
if v  v0
< E1 v; decreasing
if v0 \v\d=a
Ed v E1 v; increasing
:
E2 v; increasing
if d=a  v
so the minimum value is reached when v v0 .

The importance of Lemma 1 is that for large enough

distances, d  av0 there exists a single speed v0 which
is optimal under Profile I. We use v0 to construct the
upper bound on ES; vf .
Let S0 be the optimal solution for the standard VRP.
Let d0i be the distance of route Ri in S0 . We arrange the
different routes in descending order, with respect to
their distance, S0 fd01 ; . . .; d0s g. Equation (7) represents a lower bound on the amount of CO2 emissions
produced. The lower bound assumes that all distances can be traversed in v , so that absolute minimum emissions can be achieved.
s
X

d0i hv  ES; vf

i1

The upper bound is constructed by imposing Profile I with vf v0 onto S0 . We define u as the largest
index such that du [ av0 . Thus, routes fd01 ; . . .; d0u g
will run into congestion. However, the routes
fd0u1 ; . . .; d0s g will not suffer congestion. Equation (8)
depicts this upper bound.
ES; vf  hv0 uav0 hvc

u
s
X
X
d0i  av0 hv0
d0i
i1

 hv0  hvc uav0 hvc

u
X
i1

iu1
s
X
0

d0i hv

d0i

iu1

8
Given the standard VRP solution, these bounds are
rather straightforward to calculate, and enable deci-

We propose a tabu search procedure for the

E-TDVRP. Tabu search was first introduced by Glover
(1989a, 1989b). It makes use of adaptive memory to
escape local optima. The method has been extensively
used for solving the VRP; see Gendreau et al. (1994,
1996), and Hertz et al. (2000) for examples. Tabu
search is also used to deal with the time-dependent
version of the VRP (see Ichoua et al. 2003, Jabali et al.
2009, Van Woensel et al. 2008). The E-TDVRP model
differs from the TDVRP as it includes the free flow
speed vf as a decision variable. We chose to adapt a
tabu search procedure to fit the E-TDVRP. Essentially,
the procedure works on local search principles while
updating the vf . The algorithm searches a neighborhood with vf . After a number of iterations it checks
the performance of the best solution so far for different integer values of vf . If a value which yields better
results is found, the speed is updated and the search
continues. Next, we describe the main components of
the algorithm. The overall procedure is described in
pseudo-code in Algorithm 1.
Algorithm 1 E-TDVRP algorithmic structure
Construct initial solution S0 with vf v0 and compute
F S0 ; vf ; a; b; c.
Set the best solution Sb and the best feasible solution S  both to S0 .
Set S to S0
si = r.
for 1  i  Imax do
Generate the neighborhood of S
Choose the solution S 0 that minimizes F2 S; vf ; a; b; c and is not
tabu or satisfies its aspiration criteria.
Update the tabu list.
if S 0 is feasible and it is better than the current best feasible
solution S  then
Update the best feasible solution, i.e., set S  to S 0 .
Set si = i + r.
end if
if S 0 is not feasible and is better than the current best solution Sb then
Update the best solution i.e., set Sb to S 0 .
end if
Update w if necessary according to the feasibility status of S 0 .
if i > si then
Set the current solution S to the best solution Sb .
Check for the new best speed within vf  s; vf s and
update vf accordingly.
Set si = i + r.
end if
if new best solution found and Imax  i \ w then
set Imax i 2w
end if
Update S to S 0 .
end for
return the best feasible solution S 

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP

Production and Operations Management 0(0), pp. 115, 2012 Production and Operations Management Society

The initial solution S0 is the output of a nearest

neighbor heuristic with vf v0 . A neighborhood is
evaluated by considering all possible 1-interchanges
as proposed by Osman (1993). The (0,1) interchanges
of node vr 2 Rr to route Rp are considered only if Rp
contains one of g nearest neighbors of vr . The (1,1)
interchanges between nodes vr 2 Rr and vp 2 Rp are
considered if Rp contains one of g nearest neighbor of
vr and Rr contains one of g nearest neighbor of vp .
After completing the neighborhood search, a 2-opt
intra-route move is executed for each altered route. If
node vr is removed from Rr , reinserting vr back into
Rr is tabu for iterations. is randomly chosen
between min ; max . However, we use an aspiration
criterion similar to Cordeau et al. (2003). This criterion
revokes the tabu status of a move if it yields a solution
with lower costs.
Similar to Gendreau et al. (1994), we allow capacity-infeasible solutions, i.e., routes with total demand
exceeding the vehicle capacity. Such infeasible solutions are penalized, in proportion to the capacity violation, by the following objective function, extending
FS; vf ; a; b; c:
F2 S; vf ; a; b; c FS; vf ; a; b; c
"
!
#
X X
w
qi  Q
R2Z

i2R

In Equation (9) each unit of excess demand is penalized by a factor w. This penalty w is decreased by multiplication with a factor m after / consecutive feasible
moves. Similarly, w is increased (multiplied by factor
m1 ) after / infeasible iterations.
Every r iterations, we consider the best found solution S; vf and evaluate the solution for speeds within
the interval vf  s; vf s. The speed that minimizes
F2 S;  ; a; b; c is chosen as the new vf . If a new best
feasible solution is found then vf is kept for another
r iterations. The algorithm is run for Imax iteration.
However, if a best solution is found and the remaining number of iterations is less than w, the remaining
number of iterations is updated to 2w.

5. Experimental Settings
We conducted two types of experiments. Section 1
describes our experiments with a single speed profile.
The other experiments include two speed profiles and
are presented in section 2. We experiment with sets
from Augerat et al. (1998). The number of nodes in
these sets ranges between 32 and 80. To achieve more
realistic travel times, the coordinates of these sets
were multiplied by 4.9. Note that a test set named
32 k5 means 32 customers including the depot with
five vehicles. Optimal VRP solutions for these sets are
available from Ralphs (2011).
5.1. Single Speed Profile
We set up the speed profile with two congested periods, while throughout the rest of the day the speed is
set to the free flow speed (Figure 5, left). Many European roads face such a morning and afternoon congestion period (see Van Woensel and Vandaele 2006).
The right side of Figure 5 depicts the travel time function for each starting time for an arbitrary distance.
We set v2 and v4 to congestion speed vc . Furthermore,
v5 v3 v1 are considered as free flow speeds, that
is, they correspond to the decision variable vf in
FS; vf ; a; b; c. The points a, b, c, d, e correspond to
6:00, 9:00, 16:00, 19:00, and 0:00 hours. All links are
subjected to this profile. Based on empirical data, the
congestion speed is set to 50 km/hour (Lecluyse et al.
2009).
Observe that a starting time after 9:00 hours is superior to starting time before 9:00 hours, since the latter
risks going twice into congestion. Consequently, we
assume that all vehicles leave the depot at 9:00 hours.
To compute the upper bound, we set a in Equation (8)
to c  b. Considering vc 50 together with this profile and based on Proposition 1 leads to the conclusion
that 71  vf  91. Furthermore, by Lemma 1, the
speed for computing the upper bound on ES; vf is
v0 74 km/hour.
The parameters chosen for the costs and the tabu
search algorithm in section 4 are summarized in
Table 1. We note that c is based on the actual carbon

Figure 5 Speed and Travel Time Profile for the Experimental Setting

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP

10
Table 1

Production and Operations Management 0(0), pp. 115, 2012 Production and Operations Management Society

Cost and Tabu Search Parameter Values

Cost Parameter
a
b
c
Tabu
Search
Parameter
g

Description

Description

The penalty for infeasible solutions

Number of iterations considered in

updating w
Updating factor for w
The maximum number of iterations
Threshold for updating Imax
Number of iterations keeping the
same speed
Updating factor for r
Half-width of the interval of speed
search

m
Imax
w
r

Results for the F (S ; vf ; 0; 0; 1) Model (One Speed Profile)

Instance

F S; vf ; 0; 0; 1

vf

TT F S; vf ; 0; 0; 1

32 k5
33 k5
33 k6
34 k5
36 k5
37 k5
37 k6
38 k5
39 k5
39 k6
44 k6
45 k6
45 k7
46 k7
48 k7
53 k7
54 k7
55 k9
60 k9
61 k9
62 k8
63 k9
63 k10
64 k9
65 k9
69 k9
80 k10
Average

2976
2489
2777
2929
3088
2516
3613
2819
3175
3151
3575
3644
4466
3458
4156
3875
4563
4174
5362
4060
5104
6209
5115
5379
4666
4508
7062
4034

72
74
73
73
75
72
74
73
72
73
72
74
74
74
73
72
77
74
72
74
73
73
73
73
75
75
73
73

3420
2836
3168
3377
3449
2911
4122
3209
3852
3603
4122
4162
4918
3912
4727
4500
5023
4713
6230
4536
5871
7130
5869
6168
5228
4996
8097
4598

Value

Travel time cost ( /hour)

Fuel cost /l (diesel)
Carbon cost / ton

Number of closest customers

considered for the neighborhood
search, where n is the number of
nodes
The tabu tenure length

Table 2

20
1.2
11

Value
[0.4n]

Randomly chosen in
the interval
[15, 25]
Initial objective
function value
divided by 30
5
0.75
640
160
120
1.5
1

market cost of the first half of April 2009 (Point

Carbon 2009). All runs are performed on a Intel Core
Duo with 2.4 GHz and 2 GB of RAM.
5.1.1. Validating the Proposed Model. Table 2
shows the results for the reduced model where we
focus on emissions, that is, with the objective function FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1 ES; vf . Table 2 gives the CO2
emissions (kg), the speed limit vf , and the resulting
travel time, denoted by TTFS; vf ; 0; 0; 1; the last
column gives the run times. There is a relation
between the amount of CO2 emissions and the travel
time. For example, set 33 k5 achieves the lowest
emissions and the lowest travel time. The speeds
achieving lowest emissions range between 72 and
77 km/hour.
We tested the performance of our algorithm on the
standard time-independent VRP from Augerat et al.
(1998). The algorithm reached an average optimality
gap of 4% over the different sets. Furthermore, we
evaluated the performance when setting the free flow
speed to 71 km/hour (F(S,71;0,0,1)), which is the
speed that minimized the CO2 emissions function as
observed in Figure 2. The results showed that adopting this speed leads to an average increase of 2.9%
and 6.0% in emissions and travel times, respectively,
when compared to the results in Table 2 (see Online
Appendix S1 for further details).

Run time
(minutes)
4.8
3.3
4.2
3.8
2.3
8.5
4.9
5.0
6.6
7.7
8.3
3.0
2.7
4.6
7.4
13.6
4.0
4.0
16.0
8.4
13.2
13.3
12.2
13.6
6.9
31.1
30.9
9.0

To validate the model, we compare the results of

FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1 with the upper bound (UB) and the
lower bound (LB) presented in section 3. We generate the bounds using the optimal VRP solutions
from Ralphs (2011) for the Augerat sets. Table 3
compares the amount of CO2 emissions produced
using the FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1 ES; vf objective function
with the bounds. FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1/LB compares the
emissions produced by the E-TDVRP with the lower
bound. On average the E-TDRVP is within 4.3%
from the lower bound. We note that the LB is computed under the assumption of no congestion. The
last column in Table 3 quantifies the gap between
UB and LB. The quality of the bounds is good as
the average gap is only 4.7%. Based on this analysis,
we conclude that the solution method is efficient
and that the bounds are useful in real-life decisionmaking.
5.1.2. Numerical Results for FS; vf ; a; b; c. Table
4 gives an overview of the cost-based solutions for all
sets (a = 20 /hour, b = 1.2 /l and c = 11 /ton).
The last three columns give the allocation of costs
between its three major components.
The vast majority of costs are attributed to driving
cost and fuel cost, which together on average account
for 98.6% of the costs. The cost of CO2 is rather

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP

11

Production and Operations Management 0(0), pp. 115, 2012 Production and Operations Management Society

Table 3

Upper and Lower Bounds for F (S ; vf ; 0; 0; 1) (One Speed

Profile)

Table 4

Results for F (S0 ; vf ;a; b; c) (One Speed Profile)

Cost partition

Set

UB

LB

F S; vf ; 0; 0; 1

F S; vf ; 0; 0; 1/LB

UB/LB

32 k5
33 k5
33 k6
34 k5
36 k5
37 k5
37 k6
38 k5
39 k5
39 k6
44 k6
45 k6
45 k7
46 k7
48 k7
53 k7
54 k7
55 k9
60 k9
61 k9
62 k8
63 k9
63 k10
64 k9
65 k9
69 k9
80 k10
Average

3081
2546
2838
3016
3135
2602
3684
2822
3220
3240
3634
3648
4458
3531
4172
3897
4553
4078
5238
3925
5041
6344
5042
5437
4498
4438
6900

2904
2443
2738
2880
2957
2479
3510
2706
3056
3071
3463
3483
4229
3386
3960
3735
4320
3961
4998
3830
4771
5980
4843
5164
4356
4298
6512

2976
2489
2777
2929
3088
2516
3613
2819
3175
3151
3575
3644
4466
3458
4156
3875
4563
4174
5362
4060
5104
6209
5115
5379
4666
4508
7062

102.5%
101.9%
101.4%
101.7%
104.4%
101.5%
102.9%
104.2%
103.9%
102.6%
103.2%
104.6%
105.6%
102.1%
104.9%
103.7%
105.6%
105.4%
107.3%
106.0%
107.0%
103.8%
105.6%
104.2%
107.1%
104.9%
108.5%
104.3%

106.1%
104.2%
103.6%
104.7%
106.0%
105.0%
105.0%
104.3%
105.4%
105.5%
104.9%
104.7%
105.4%
104.3%
105.3%
104.3%
105.4%
103.0%
104.8%
102.5%
105.7%
106.1%
104.1%
105.3%
103.2%
103.3%
106.0%
104.7%

insignificant when compared to others: 1.4% on average. Specifically, the current market cost of CO2 has
no tangible economic impact on the results. However,
due to the direct relation between fuel consumption
and CO2, speeds associated with this model are
between 80 and 87 km/hour. In fact, in all instances
the resulting speed is strictly less than 90 km/hour.
This implies that even with the current cost structure
speeds are likely to be <90 km/hour.
5.1.3. The Reduced Models: FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1 and
FS; vf ; 1; 0; 0. We analyze the results for the two
reduced models. The first one optimizes only on the
emissions (FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1), the second one focuses on
travel times (FS; vf ; 1; 0; 0). This facilitates a trade-off
analysis between travel times and emissions. We ran
the settings F(S,80;1,0,0) and F(S,90;1,0,0), that is, we
fixed the speed limits to 80 and 90 respectively. The
truck speed limit in most European countries is 80 or
90 km/hour, so these two specific settings depict an
interesting European benchmark.
Let TTFS; vf ; 0; 0; 1 be the travel times resulting
from the (reduced) model with objective function
FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1. Specifically, the objective function only
depends on emissions. The resulting solution (S; vf ) is
then evaluated in terms of the travel time resulting in
TTFS; vf ; 0; 0; 1. Similarly, we define the emissions

Set

F S0 ; vf ; a; b; c

vf

CO2
(kg)

Driver
cost

Fuel
cost

CO2
cost

32 k5
33 k5
33 k6
34 k5
36 k5
37 k5
37 k6
38 k5
39 k5
39 k6
44 k6
45 k6
45 k7
46 k7
48 k7
53 k7
54 k7
55 k9
60 k9
61 k9
62 k8
63 k9
63 k10
64 k9
65 k9
69 k9
80 k10
Average

2411
1999
2267
2380
2494
2043
2934
2247
2671
2788
2952
2984
3837
2856
3341
3245
3714
3463
4534
3341
4370
5026
4414
4612
3604
3679
5631

84
87
85
86
85
85
86
84
85
86
87
82
87
84
86
86
82
80
80
82
86
86
80
85
83
84
84

3092
2615
2924
3061
3221
2636
3799
2937
3423
3626
3893
3750
4958
3680
4349
4208
4676
4327
5632
4247
5655
6476
5505
5916
4628
4773
7187

41.6%
40.4%
41.3%
41.4%
41.2%
41.2%
41.0%
40.5%
41.6%
40.8%
39.9%
42.8%
41.1%
41.3%
40.7%
40.9%
42.7%
43.1%
43.4%
42.1%
41.1%
41.3%
43.2%
41.6%
41.5%
40.9%
41.9%
41.5%

57.0%
58.1%
57.3%
57.2%
57.4%
57.3%
57.6%
58.1%
56.9%
57.8%
58.6%
55.9%
57.4%
57.3%
57.8%
57.6%
55.9%
55.5%
55.2%
56.5%
57.5%
57.3%
55.4%
57.0%
57.1%
57.7%
56.7%
57.1%

1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.5%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%

corresponding to the (reduced) model with objective

function F(S,80;1,0,0) as E(F(S,80;1,0,0)). This means
that we generate a solution (S; vf ) by minimizing the
travel time and then evaluate this solution in terms of
its emissions, which is denoted by E(F(S,80;1,0,0)). We
use the following notation.
TTFS; vf ; 0; 0; 1  FS; 80; 1; 0; 0
FS; 80; 1; 0; 0
FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1  EFS; 80; 0; 0; 1

EFS; 80; 1; 0; 0
TTFS; vf ; 0; 0; 1  FS; 90; 1; 0; 0

FS; 90; 1; 0; 0
FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1  EFS; 90; 0; 0; 1

EFS; 90; 1; 0; 0

DTT80
DE80
DTT90
DE90

In the above expressions the current situation corresponds to the setting with a fixed speed, that is, 80 or
90 km/hour, where the minimization is on the total
travel time. In the alternative situation the objective is
to minimize emissions, that is, the objective function
FS; vf ; 0; 0; 1.
Table 5 gives an overview of the potential savings
in emissions, compared to the amount of travel time

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP

12
Table 5

Production and Operations Management 0(0), pp. 115, 2012 Production and Operations Management Society

Trade-off between Emissions and Travel Times (One Speed

Profile)

Table 6

Results for FS; vf ; a; b; c (Two Speed Profiles)

Cost partition

Instance

DE80

DE90

DTT80

DTT90

32 k5
33 k5
33 k6
34 k5
36 k5
37 k5
37 k6
38 k5
39 k5
39 k6
44 k6
45 k6
45 k7
46 k7
48 k7
53 k7
54 k7
55 k9
60 k9
61 k9
62 k8
63 k9
63 k10
64 k9
65 k9
69 k9
80 k10
Average

0.8%
4.2%
5.3%
2.8%
1.4%
2.1%
1.1%
1.4%
8.5%
2.0%
5.3%
3.9%
0.8%
1.4%
2.1%
5.1%
1.5%
2.1%
4.9%
2.4%
6.4%
5.3%
3.4%
4.7%
3.3%
2.5%
0.7%
3.2%

 9.2%
8.5%
12.4%
12.6%
8.2%
9.0%
11.2%
16.1%
12.0%
16.0%
9.5%
9.7%
9.3%
14.3%
12.3%
9.9%
6.7%
12.7%
11.9%
10.3%
13.9%
8.6%
11.7%
14.2%
12.0%
10.2%
14.5%
11.4%

10.3%
4.9%
4.0%
7.3%
6.5%
9.0%
7.3%
11.1%
6.4%
8.9%
5.6%
7.6%
4.5%
8.1%
6.3%
5.8%
5.1%
7.4%
5.5%
7.7%
2.5%
3.6%
6.6%
4.4%
5.0%
6.2%
9.7%
6.6%

20.2%
20.6%
15.1%
19.1%
20.2%
21.5%
17.5%
17.0%
21.0%
10.3%
20.4%
19.2%
12.0%
13.2%
13.5%
20.5%
17.1%
18.0%
17.0%
22.6%
11.5%
17.6%
16.7%
13.1%
15.3%
20.3%
10.5%
17.1%

needed to be sacrificed to achieve this saving. Columns 2 and 3 exhibit the decrease in emissions,
while the last two columns exhibit the increase in
emissions. Considering the speed limit of 90 km/
hour, Table 5 implies that an average reduction of
11.4% in CO2 emissions can be achieved. However,
such a reduction will result in an average increase
in travel time by 17.1%. Looking to the situation
with a speed limit of 80 km/hour an average of
3.2% reduction in emissions can be achieved, which
would require an average increase of 6.6% in
travel time. These results show that in the case of
90 km/hour a substantial reduction of CO2 emissions can be achieved.
5.2. Two Speed Profiles
In this section we consider two speed profiles. In
addition to the profile considered in section 1, we add
a similar profile but with a congestion speed equal to
70 km/hour similar to (Van Woensel and Vandaele
2006), instead of 50 km/hour. The two profiles were
randomly assigned to the various distances in the
instances.
We ran FS0 ; vf ; a; b; c for the two speed profile setting. Table 6 gives an overview of the performance of
the solutions for all sets; the last three columns give
the allocation of cost among its three components.

Set
32 k5
33 k5
33 k6
34 k5
36 k5
37 k5
37 k6
38 k5
39 k5
39 k6
44 k6
45 k6
45 k7
46 k7
48 k7
53 k7
54 k7
55 k9
60 k9
61 k9
62 k8
63 k9
63 k10
64 k9
65 k9
69 k9
80 k10
average

F S0 ; vf ; a; b; c

vf

CO2
(kg)

Driver
cost

Fuel
cost

CO2
cost

2487
1968
2234
2332
2450
2004
2925
2199
2632
2763
2875
2850
3633
2781
3393
3221
3736
3319
4371
3189
4279
4976
4069
4554
3826
3639
5673

85
85
83
85
84
85
85
85
85
84
84
85
85
85
83
85
84
81
82
82
85
83
84
85
85
85
82

3231
2564
2887
3039
3161
2625
3823
2874
2874
3571
3728
3729
4744
3641
4371
4198
4851
4243
5593
4114
5588
6394
5300
5951
5027
4804
7250

40.8%
40.7%
41.1%
40.7%
41.2%
40.4%
40.5%
40.5%
40.8%
41.1%
40.9%
40.4%
40.5%
40.4%
41.3%
40.6%
40.9%
41.8%
41.7%
41.2%
40.5%
41.5%
40.7%
40.5%
40.2%
39.9%
41.8%
40.8%

57.7%
57.9%
57.4%
57.9%
57.3%
58.2%
58.1%
58.1%
57.7%
57.4%
57.6%
58.2%
58.0%
58.2%
57.2%
57.9%
57.7%
56.8%
56.9%
57.3%
58.0%
57.1%
57.9%
58.1%
58.4%
58.7%
56.8%
57.7%

1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.4%
1.5%
1.4%
1.4%

Similar to the single speed profile case, the majority of

costs are attributed to driving cost and fuel cost. However, due to the direct relation between fuel consumption and CO2, speeds associated with this model are
between 81 and 85 km/hour.
Both for the single and for the two speed profile
case the resulting speeds (vf ) are within the same
range. For the single speed profile case, where congestion speed is 50 km/hour, the best strategy to limit
fuel and emissions costs is to try to avoid congestion,
and thus speeds are higher than v 71 km/hour).
For the two speed profile case, the congestion speeds
are 70 and 50 km/hour. The congestion speed of
70 km/hour is rather similar to v . For these cases,
minimizing fuel and emissions costs leads to prefering congestion and to reduce the speed. However,
this is countered by the travel time cost.
As the resulting speeds for both one and two
speed profiles are within similar ranges, we examine
the case where we set vf to 85 km/hour for all sets.
This value is observed in 14 sets from Table 6.
Furthermore, having a single value for all sets might
be easier from an operational point of view. Similar
to the previous definitions, we define the following
relations.

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP

Production and Operations Management 0(0), pp. 115, 2012 Production and Operations Management Society

TTFS; vf ; a; b; c  TTFS; 85; a; b; c

TTFS; 85; a; b; c
EFS; vf ; a; b; c  EFS; 85; a; b; c

EFS; 85; a; b; c
FS; vf ; a; b; c  FS; 85; a; b; c

FS; 85; a; b; c
FS; vf ; a; b; c  FS; 85; a; b; c

DTT85
DE85
DF85
KF85

Table 7 exhibits the results of setting vf to 85 km/hour.

We note that the differences are not substantial. The
cost for FS; vf ; a; b; c is on average only 1.1% lower
than the cost for F(S,85;a,b,c). However, in absolute
values, as depicted by KF85 , differences of up to
144.6 are observed. For the analyzed sets, we conclude that setting the vehicle speed to 85 km/hour
results in a good compromise between travel time
minimization and emissions minimization.

6. Conclusions and Future Research

Carrier companies need to consider employing
greener practices in the future. This article establishes
a framework for modeling CO2 emissions in a timedependent VRP context, by the E-TDVRP model. It
proposes an efficient solution method for the
E-TDVRP. We show the potential reduction in emisTable 7.

Comparison of F(S ; vf ; a; b; c) and F(S,85;a,b,c) (Two Speed

Profiles)

Set

F S0 ; 85; a; b; c

DTT 85

DE 85

DF 85

KF 85

32 k5
33 k5
33 k6
34 k5
36 k5
37 k5
37 k6
38 k5
39 k5
39 k6
44 k6
45 k6
45 k7
46 k7
48 k7
53 k7
54 k7
55 k9
60 k9
61 k9
62 k8
63 k9
63 k10
64 k9
65 k9
69 k9
80 k10
average

2489
1968
2234
2384
2450
2040
2960
2229
2632
2763
2875
2899
3643
2908
3393
3258
3736
3319
4371
3189
4282
4976
4069
4738
3891
3665
5673

0.0%
0.0%
2.9%
0.0%
0.7%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.9%
1.7%
3.8%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
2.0%
0.0%
0.1%
3.9%
1.6%
0.2%
0.0%
0.5%
2.9%
0.0%
0.0%
0.0%
0.9%
0.1%

0%
0%
5%
0%
5%
0%
0%
0%
2%
2%
5%
0%
0%
0%
2%
0%
1%
4%
2%
5%
0%
3%
4%
0%
0%
0%
4%
1.7%

0%
0%
4%
0%
4%
0%
0%
0%
2%
2%
4%
0%
0%
0%
0%
0%
1%
1%
1%
3%
0%
2%
4%
0%
0%
0%
2%
1.1%

0
0.0
100.1
0.0
89.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
47.9
54.8
129.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
8.5
0.0
25.9
25.4
35.8
104.7
0.0
78.6
144.6
0.0
0.0
0.0
124.5
35.9

13

sions when weighed against travel time. Furthermore,

we show that reducing emissions may have a positive
impact with respect to reducing cost.
We analyzed the effect of limiting vehicle speed in a
time-dependent VRP setting on the generated amount
of CO2 emissions. Time-dependency was established
by subjecting distances to variable speed profiles. CO2
emissions were modeled as a function of speed. The
speed, which optimizes CO2 emissions per km, was
not observed in any of our experimental settings. This
is explained by the relation between limiting free flow
speed and the likelihood of running into congestion.
In congestion, the vehicle is forced to drive more
slowly and emits more CO2. Thus, increasing the free
flow speed decreases the amount of time spent in congestion, and thereby may result in less emissions.
Based on the optimal VRP solutions in the literature, we constructed an upper and lower bound for
CO2 emissions. We showed that these bounds are
tight, on average the gap was 4.7%. From a practical
point of view these bounds are simple and fast to calculate. They require standard VRP solutions that are
commonly used in practice. The bounds enable the
assessment of the potential reduction in CO2 emissions.
Considering CO2 emissions, the results of the ETDVRP were rather close to the lower bound, with a
difference of 4.3% on average. This indicates that the
chosen solution strategy was adequate. We compared
two extreme cases of the E-TDVRP model, considering only travel times and considering only CO2 emissions. For the first case, two possible speed limits
were considered, 80 and 90 km/hour. For a speed
limit of 90 km/hour our results showed that achieving an average reduction of 11.4% in CO2 emissions
required an average increase in travel time of 17.1%.
However, for a speed limit of 80 km/hour, an average
increase of 6.6% in travel times achieves a reduction
of 3.2% in CO2 emissions.
Considering one and two congestion speeds, the
experiments showed that from a realistic cost perspective it is beneficial for vehicles to go below
90 km/hour. We also showed that adopting a speed
limit of 85 km/hour yields good results in terms of
total cost over all sets. Finally, we conclude that minimizing CO2 emissions by limiting vehicle speed can
be costly in terms of travel time. Nevertheless, limiting vehicle speed to a certain extent might be both
cost and emission effective.
Additional enhancement of the algorithm may
facilitate the solution of larger instances. Future
research can also focus upon more accurate emissions
modeling. For example, the weight of the vehicle has
an impact on the amount of emissions, and in the
VRP context this can be incorporated as a function of
satisfied demand. In addition, more sophisticated

14

Jabali, Van Woensel, and de Kok: Travel Times and CO2 Emissions in TDVRP
Production and Operations Management 0(0), pp. 115, 2012 Production and Operations Management Society

travel time profiles can be constructed to encompass

acceleration and deceleration, which in return will
enable more accurate emissions modeling. Furthermore, the proposed model can be employed to investigate the costs and benefits of using alternative fuels
in the context of VRP.
We have shown that the current market cost of CO2
has no tangible economic impact on the results. However, exploring this value is yet another possible
extension to this work. Examining the impact of this
value on transportation-related strategies is a relevant
research question.

Acknowledgments
The research of Ola Jabali has been funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), project
number 400-05-185. Thanks are due to the referees for their
valuable comments.

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Additional Supporting Information may be found in the

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Appendix S1. Validation of the solution method
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