Duration and parking

Duration

The duration of a Job is the amount of time which a Driver will spend serving that Job once they are on site. It is often referred to as the service time.

During the optimisation the duration is used to calculate the Estimated Time of Departure (ETD) from a Job, together with any applied parking:

job.etd = job.eta + parking + duration

Parking Duration

parking_duration is the time a Driver spends parking or docking after they arrive at a Job, before they finish serving it. It is part of the on-site stop, not extra driving.

Use it when arriving at a site takes time of its own — finding a park, booking into a dock, passing a gate — that you do not want to charge again if the Driver is already there.

Typical uses:

• A warehouse dock: time to get onto the dock, then several pickups or drops in a row
• A customer site with a long walk from the street
• A gated facility with a check-in

The sequence at a stop is always:

1. Arrive (this is the Job's ETA)
2. Park, if parking applies at this stop
3. Serve (duration)
4. Leave (this is the Job's ETD)

How a stop is timed

Already on site

Arrive

Serve

Leave

Drove here

Arrive

Park

Serve

Leave

Parking and service are one contiguous block and cannot be split.

Set parking_duration on every Job that needs it. The optimiser applies it only when the Driver actually drives to that location (nonzero driving time from the previous stop, including from the Driver's start). Service duration is still applied on every Job.

If the first Job is at the Driver's start location (zero driving time from start), parking is not applied. Parking is applied again if the Driver leaves the site and later returns.

parking_duration is optional and defaults to 0. Units are minutes, the same as duration.

earliest_eta = previous_etd + driving_time
job.eta = max(earliest_eta, arrive_after)
job.etd = job.eta + parking_if_first_at_site + duration

This is independent of Pickup Delivery. A single warehouse drop, a site visit, or any other stop can have a parking time. When several warehouse pickups or drops sit next to each other, see Pickup Delivery with Parking Duration.

Example

The Driver starts at the warehouse. The first Job is a pickup at that same warehouse, so parking is waived. The next Job is a delivery elsewhere, so parking is applied there.

{
  "drivers": [
    {
      "uid": "driver_1",
      "shift_start": 8,
      "shift_end": 17,
      "start": {"lat": -33.867798, "lon": 151.166256},
      "end": "start"
    }
  ],
  "jobs": [
    {
      "uid": "warehouse_pickup",
      "duration": 8, // (1)
      "parking_duration": 10, // (2)
      "location": {"lat": -33.867798, "lon": 151.166256}
    },
    {
      "uid": "customer_drop",
      "duration": 5,
      "parking_duration": 3, // (3)
      "location": {"lat": -33.880661, "lon": 151.183096},
      "pickup_from": "warehouse_pickup" // (4)
    }
  ],
  "settings": {}
}

1. Loading time — applied on every Job
2. Dock time — waived here because the Driver starts at this warehouse
3. Applied: the Driver drove to this customer
4. Pickup Delivery pair; parking is independent of that coupling