by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Urban consolidation centres (UCCs) are a popular measure in city logistics. However, many UCCs strongly rely on government subsidies and are granted a short life because of their inability to reach financial sustainability. Despite the interest from both the practitioners and the research community, there are a limited number of quantitative contributions that investigate the …
Rapid urban growth has posed both challenges and opportunities for city planners, not in the least when it comes to the design of urban freight systems. But urbanization also fosters innovation and sharing, which have led to new models for organizing urban freight, e.g. crowd based logistics.
Home deliveries are the preferred method of delivery for consumers today. But, due to the specific, costly nature of home deliveries together with changes within society e.g. people working longer and more flexible hours and the competition between logistics providers, new more sustainable alternatives are being implemented. Automated parcel lockers being such an alternative.
To increase the benefits of a UCC in city logistics, the delivery to the final customers from the UCC can be done using light electric freight vehicles. These LEFV provide numerous operational benefits due to their smaller size while being more sustainable than regular light commercial vans.
A new research paper by Michela Le Pira et. al. addresses the complex problem of multi-stakeholder decisions in urban freight transport policy-making from a public authority perspective, by proposing a procedure based on a modelling approach to support stakeholder involvement in the decision making process.
The trend towards shorter delivery lead-times reduces operational efficiency and increases transportation costs for internet retailers. Mobile technology, however, creates new opportunities to organize the last-mile. In a paper from 2016 researchers from Erasmus University (NL) study the concept of crowdsourced delivery that aims to use excess capacity on journeys that already take place to …
The demand for instant deliveries has existed for some time but until recently was seen as a niche service in areas such as urgent document or pizza deliveries. The rise in e-commerce and the changing habits of consumers has resulted in a dramatic change in the demand for instant deliveries and also a major increase in available services …
The European Commission has promoted actions and policies with the aim of reducing the negative impacts on traffic and environment caused by city logistics. One increasingly popular measure is the use of cargo bikes in city logistics due to their improved energy efficiency, lower emissions and lower traffic disturbance.
City logistics will become more complex and costly. The demand for city logistics grows because of urbanization. Most urbanization takes place in emerging economies leading, amongst others, to the rapid emergence of highly dense megacities. Research by Vrije Universiteit Brussels (B) looks at alternative urban freight options for deliveries to megacities
The EU-funded CITYLAB, NOVELOG, SUCCESS, U-TURN projects join forces and invite professionals to the CIVITAS Urban Freight Conference on April 23 and 24 in Brussels (B). The conference is interactive event including presentations, posters and exhibitions, breakout and training sessions, workshops and awards.