SCHEDULING THE POSTAL CARRIERS FOR THE UNITED STATES POSTAL SERVICE: AN APPLICATION OF ARC PARTITIONING AND ROUTING. VEHICLE ROUTING: METHODS AND STUDIES. STUDIES IN MANAGEMENT SCIENCE AND SYSTEMS - VOLUME 16

In the walking line of travel problem, we are given a set of postal carriers who must deliver mail to a specified area (such as a zip code area) while walking their routes. Two algorithms are proposed for solving this problem. These algorithms are tested on a variety of problems based on a portion of a zip code area in ft worth, Texas. It is shown in this paper that both algorithms work well with respect to the multiple criteria proposed for this problem. Furthermore, it is shown that these algorithms are computationally efficient. (Author/TRRL)