Two-Echelon Delivery Vehicle Sharing and Repositioning in Hyperconnected Urban Logistic Networks

Mathematics > Optimization and Control [Submitted on 16 Jun 2026] Title:Two-Echelon Delivery Vehicle Sharing and Repositioning in Hyperconnected Urban Logistic Networks View PDF HTML (experimental)Abstract:In response to the growing demand for sustainable and efficient urban deliveries, this study introduces a two-echelon vehicle sharing and repositioning problem for containerized delivery operations within a hyperconnected urban logistics system. We leverage a Physical Internet (PI)-enabled three-tier logistic hub network, comprising gateway, local, and access hubs, to facilitate efficient flows. By adopting containerized delivery, vehicles can rapidly swap standardized modular containers at hubs to reduce handling time. Moreover, inspired by the PI concept of open resource sharing, we determine optimal service routes within a two-echelon structure that jointly utilizes heterogeneous vehicle fleets and enables dynamic vehicle relocation across hubs. We formulate this problem as a multi-period integer program that integrates path-based service vehicle planning with arc-based container routing. To address real-world large-scale instances, we propose a decomposition-based heuristic with capacity-aware flow assignment, which partitions the problem into subproblems structured by echelons and regions. A case study on the Atlanta metropolitan area demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed model and solution approach. Experimental results show that the two-echelon hyperconnected delivery system reduces CO2-eq emissions by 45.0% and total costs by 16.8% at full market share compared to a traditional single-echelon alternative, while enabling vehicle repositioning further lowers costs by up to 17.7%. References & Citations Loading... Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Recommenders and Search Tools Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.