A model of fleet planning for land-island transport

Land-island transport is an important component of waterway transportation and it is closely related to the island residents´ living, working and the development of island economy. At present, there is no literature about fleet planning of land-island transport. The main purpose of the paper is to establish a model of fleet planning of land-island transport. By using the linear programming method, the model´s object function is to minimize the annual operating cost of the fleet and the constraints are defined on the basis of the characteristics of land-island transport. Finally the paper takes the land-island routes between Pikou port and the islands of Changhai in Dalian. PRC as an example to test the model and obtain the result of the following five years. As a result, the model is verified that it is fit for solving the problem of the fleet planning of land-island transport.