Polynomial-Time Approximation Schemes for Bounded-Capacity Vehicle Routing and Clustering Problems in Metrics with Bounded Highway Dimension

The concept of bounded highway dimension was developed to capture observed properties of the metrics of road networks. We show that a metric with bounded highway dimension and a distinguished point (the depot) can be embedded into a a graph of bounded treewidth in such a way that the distance between $u$ and $v$ is preserved up to an additive error of $\epsilon$ times the distance from $u$ or $v$ to the depot. We show that this theorem yields a PTAS for Bounded-Capacity Vehicle Routing in metrics of bounded highway dimension. In this problem, the input specifies a depot and a set of client locations; the output is a set of depot-to-depot tours, where each tour is responsible for visiting at most $Q$ client locations. Our PTAS can be extended to handle penalties for unvisited clients. We extend this embedding in a case where there is a set $S$ of distinguished points. The treewidth depends on $|S|$, and the distance between $u$ and $v$ is preserved up to an additive error of $\epsilon$ times the distance from $u$ and $v$ to $S$. This embedding implies a PTAS for Multiple Depot Bounded-Capacity Vehicle Routing, where the tours can go from one depot to an other. The embedding also implies that, for fixed $k$, there is a PTAS for $k$-Center in metrics of bounded highway dimension. In this problem, the goal is to minimize $d$ such that there exist $k$ points (the centers) such that every point is within distance $d$ of some center. Similarly, for fixed $k$, there is a PTAS for $k$-Median in metrics of bounded highway dimension. The goal of this problem is to minimize the sum of distances to the $k$ centers.