A New Branch-and-Cut Algorithm for the Generalized Directed Rural Postman Problem

The generalized directed rural postman problem, also known as the close-enough arc routing problem, is an arc routing problem with some interesting real-life applications, such as routing for meter reading. In this article we introduce two new formulations for this problem as well as various families of new valid inequalities that are used to design and implement a branch-and-cut algorithm. The computational results obtained on test bed instances from the literature show that this algorithm outperforms the existing exact methods.