Optimization of the simultaneous pickup and delivery vehicle routing problem based on carbon tax

Purpose In order to reduce logistics transportation costs and respond to low-carbon economy, the purpose of this paper is to study the more practical and common simultaneous pickup and delivery vehicle routing problem, which considers the carbon tax policy. A low-carbon simultaneous pickup and delivery vehicle routing problem model is constructed with the minimum total costs as the objective function. Design/methodology/approach This study develops a mathematical optimization model with the minimum total costs, including the carbon emissions costs as the objective function. An adaptive genetic hill-climbing algorithm is designed to solve the model. Findings First, the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified by numerical experiments. Second, the research results prove that carbon tax mechanism can effectively reduce carbon emissions within effective carbon tax interval. Finally, the research results also show that, under the carbon tax mechanism, the effect of vehicle speed on total costs will become more obvious with the increase of carbon tax. Research limitations/implications - This paper only considers the weight of the cargo, but it does not consider the volume of the cargo. Originality/value Few studies focus on environmental issues in the simultaneous pickup and delivery problem. Thus, this paper constructs a green path optimization model, combining the carbon tax mechanism for the problem. This paper further analyzes the impact of carbon tax value on total costs and carbon emission; at the same time, the effect of vehicle speed on total cost is also analyzed.