Monthly archives: August, 2022

The carbon footprint of alternative grocery shopping and new transportation options

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the growth of e-commerce and automated warehouses, vehicles, and robots and has created new options for grocery supply chains. As shoppers searched for safe and convenient ways to get essential items, grocers adapted to meet increased e-commerce demand. Micro-fulfillment center enabled grocers to quickly fill pickup orders, sometimes within an …

Research: usability of Physical Internet characteristics for sustainable urban freight

Urban freight logistics currently have to deal with multiple unsustainable conditions. Physical Internet (PI) characteristics promise to make urban freight logistics more sustainable. The PI is a vision that could fundamentally change current logistics operations. Montreuil even thinks that “we face a revolution as radical as the Internet Revolution.” Ballot et al. define the PI …

Europe’s mega EV charging city logistics campus

A smart city logistics campus just outside Amsterdam will provide mass electric-vehicle charging and enable a ban on fossil fuel engines by 2030. Watch to find out how digital enterprises are coming together to reimagine the future of last-mile logistics. So CLIC partner Essent. In conversation with Financial Times, COO Stephan Segbers explains why the …

LCV versus cargo bike: the case of DB Schenker in Paris

A paper by researchers from SPLOTT – AME, Gustave Eiffel University, Champs-sur-Marne, France, focuses on the conditions for the financial sustainability of cargo bikes compared with electric light commercial vehicles (LCVs). The analysis is based on real data from parcel service company DB Schenker. The dataset consists of 600.000 operations made in Paris over two …

Research: purchase intention and actual purchase of cargo bikes

To support the penetration of cargo cycles in commercial freight transport, research by Narayanan et al. aims at identifying the significant influencing factors for their purchase, using data from Europe’s largest cargo cycle testing project, “Ich entlaste Städte.” This is achieved by developing binary logit models for the intention to purchase (stated at the end …

Electric cargo bikes – a comprehensive review

Electric cargo bikes can potentially reduce the negative impacts of transportation systems when utilized for the right application. There is a growing literature, especially on commercial freight transport. Therefore, it is essential to have a comprehensive outlook of the prevailing literature to synthesize the existing knowledge base. A paper by Narayanan and Antoniou consolidates the …

UPS named winner in IDC’s Best in Future of Operations North American Awards

International Data Corporation (IDC) announced UPS was named Overall Winner of the IDC Future Enterprise Best in Future of Operations North America Awards for its “On-road Dynamic Route Optimization and Navigation” (ORION 3.0) project. The annual awards recognize an organization that can rethink how operations are managed. At the heart of ORION 3.0 is UPS’s desire to …

Exploratory scenario analysis: the future of urban logistics in 2040

Urban logistics is characterized by a high degree of freight flow fragmentation, the employment of various delivery methods, and the use of various vehicle capacities. Urban logistics is essential for inhabitants’ quality of life, both negatively and positively. It plays a prominent economic role with significant advantages for multiple stakeholders along complex, dynamic supply chains. …

Experts’ opinions about lasting innovative technologies in City Logistics

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the relevance of goods delivery in urban areas. However, this activity often generates a negative environmental impact. Several technologies have been proposed in recent years to reduce it, thus forming a complex innovation landscape characterized by different levels of maturity and effects on the City Logistics (CL) system. This complexity …