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Truck Ban

Overview​

Truck bans are temporal access restrictions applied to specific areas, preventing certain vehicle types from entering, traveling within, or performing pickups/dropoffs during predefined time periods.

This feature is particularly valuable in dense urban environments (e.g., Manila, Jakarta) where large vehicles are restricted during peak hours to reduce congestion. By respecting these bans, logistics planners ensure compliance with local regulations and avoid fines or delays.

How It Works​

The core mechanism for handling truck bans is Time Window Adjustment. The optimizer incorporates the ban period into the operating hours of affected nodes.

If a location lies within a truck-ban geofence, its available time windows are "shrunk" to exclude the prohibited hours.

Visual Illustration​

Consider a node with original time windows from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM. If a truck ban is active in that area from 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM and 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM:

The resulting effective time windows for the node become:

  1. 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
  2. 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM

This ensures the node is only served when the vehicle is legally allowed to be in the area.

Handling Edge Cases (Buffer Time)​

To account for travel time required to enter or exit a restricted zone before a ban starts, the system applies an arbitrary Buffer Time.

For example, with a default buffer, the effective window might account for travel:

  • Instead of opening exactly at 10:00 AM, it might ensure the vehicle doesn't enter the zone until it's safe.
  • Instead of closing exactly at 5:00 PM, it might force the vehicle to complete service and leave by 4:30 PM to avoid being trapped by the 5:00 PM ban.

This is controlled by the truckban_buffer_time_windows parameter.

Strategies​

There are two primary strategies for applying these rules, configured via truckban_strategy:

1. Default (Universal Adjustment)​

Adjusts the payload of nodes regardless of the vehicle type assigned. The system pre-calculates the restricted windows based on all applicable bans and applies them to the node. This is simpler but more restrictive if mixed fleets (some allowed, some banned) are used.

2. Duplicate Nodes (Vehicle-Specific)​

Duplicating nodes allows the system to apply restrictions only to specific vehicle types.

  • Original Node: Keeps original time windows (available to all other vehicles).
  • Duplicated Node: Assigned restricted time windows and tagged with specific vehicle_labels (e.g., "6-wheeler").

This ensures that a smaller vehicle (exempt from ban) can serve the node at any time, while a large truck (subject to ban) can only serve it during off-peak hours.