Optimization of Solid Waste Collection and Transportation System by Use of the TransCAD: A Case Study

Background & Aims of the Study: Collection and transportation of municipal solid waste(MSW) for various reasons, especially economic and social are considered as one of themost important elements of the solid waste management system. More than sixty percent ofthe costs in solid waste management systems in different countries are due to the collectionand transportation process including laboring cost, the high price of fuel and machinery andequipments maintenance. This paper aims optimization of solid waste collection routes ofMarvdasht, located in Fars province of Iran.Materials & Methods: This approach consists of several steps. First step includes filedvisits, surveys, and interviews with relevant authorities and individuals in the form ofquestionnaires through which available information about the current route of solid wasteare collected. TransCAD, a professional and specialized software for solid waste routing, isthen employed for solid waste collection optimization taking into account factors such asshortest path length and time, minimum U-turn and capacity of machinery, etc…Results: The proposed routes were compared to the existing routes for collection of wasteconsidering costs and collection time. According to the results obtained from TransCADsoftware for the considered case, compared to the current service the total distance andtravel time can be decreased up to 16% and 30%, respectively.Conclusions: TransCAD software can perform appropriate routing for solid wastecollection, which has the optimized total distance travelled and travel time as did forMarvdasht city.