Optimization of a rural bus service integrated with e-commerce deliveries guided by a new sustainable policy in China

Electronic business has expanded, resulting in flourishing rural e-commerce globally, and particularly in China. This paper introduces a novel rural public transit system that integrates passenger and freight services—a rural electric bus service that provides services for passengers and e-commerce packages. This blended service reduces logistical costs and generates additional income for the transit operator. The objective is to minimise cost for the transit user and operator by using a mixed-integer linear programming model that solves bus routing and bus trip scheduling for multiple rural towns; in addition, the model is tested by the Gurobi solver at small-scale instances. The developed solution is a hybrid heuristic algorithm based on adaptive large neighborhood search and tabu search approaches. Finally, a case study in China is conducted to examine the proposed cost-effective methodology and ensure that the integrated scheme will significantly save operational system costs without causing any passenger inconvenience. The research also shows how to optimally design the size of rural electric buses to reduce purchasing and maintenance costs. The optimal results of the case study, comprising 5 towns and 78 villages, show an annual cost saving of approximately ¥847,000 (approximately $121,000) and an annual mileage saving of approximately 66,000 km for the proposed scheme. In addition, the case study explicates key parameters selected for transfer package requirements and the effective deployment of the proposed scheme.