Locating alternative-fuel refueling stations on a multi-class vehicle transportation network

The existing literature regarding the location of alternative fuel (AF) refueling stations in transportation networks generally assumes that all vehicles are capable of traveling the same driving range and have similar levels of fuel in their tanks at the moment they enter the network and when they exit it. In this article, we relax these assumptions and introduce a multi-class vehicle transportation network in which vehicles have different driving ranges and fuel tank levels at their origins and destinations. A 0-1 linear programming model is proposed for locating a given number of refueling stations that maximize the total traffic flow covered (in round trips per time unit) by the stations on the network. Through numerical experiments with the 2011 medium- and heavy-duty truck traffic data in the Pennsylvania Turnpike, we identify the optimal sets of refueling stations for AF trucks on a multi-class vehicle transportation network.