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.