Today I’m going to show you how to use a new feature called Radius Routing. You can also watch this demo as a 4 minute video here:
Adiona only uses high quality traffic data and duration-based calculations to create efficient routes, but a common situation in higher density urban routing is that the algorithms have a hard time accounting for parking. While a certain sequence of stops might be most efficient to an algorithm based on traffic, a driver in the real world wants to park as few times as possible even if it means delivering more orders on foot.
Radius Routing lets you assign a distance radius for the algorithm to group stops within. So even if that results in a slightly longer route calculation, it could be much more convenient for the driver.
So here you see a 30 stop route in Chicago surrounded by some other routes.
At the top here you see there are two stops very close to each other but they haven’t been routed sequentially.
Since they have large time windows, the reason is because to service stop 3, we’re going to have to go up and down North Sheffield Ave anyway, and the eastern link to continue the route is too far north compared to doubling back and continuing east via stop 4. So the algorithm does it’s best, but a driver would likely prefer to either do stop 3 first and then 2 and 4 together, or 2 and 4 together and then stop 3. Either way, it’s going to be one less parking stop required.
So let’s re-run this route with radius routing set to a 50 meter radius.
You can see now that those stops have been grouped sequentially in a preferable way for the driver. The route length has increased by 1 minute compared to the previous version, but obviously it’s more efficient because of the parking efficiency.
There's one other example in the video linked here and up at the top. Check it out and if you are curious about trying this yourself, get in touch via our website for a free Adiona trial and "Don't go an extra mile!"
