by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Road transport is an enabler for economic and social life and one of the key sectors of the EU, corresponding to at least 5% of the European Gross Value Added and employing around 10.3 million people. Today, approximately 73 % of the total EU population lives in cities, towns, and suburbs, and the urban population’s …
Analysis suggests that if delivery companies switched to using cargo bikes instead of diesel vans for first and last-mile deliveries, it would save the UK NHS and other Government services more than £4 billion. The cost savings, claimed by cargo bike delivery firm Pedal and Post and researchers at Just Economics, are derived from reduced …
The logistics sector must be net zero by 2050. But all measures proposed will create an uneven playing field with selective access to logistics capabilities, people, money, data, and energy. So how will transport companies survive? I was asked to lecture on sustainability for a group of CEOs from European transport companies. I hyperventilated. What …
City logistics take a considerable part in urban transportation. Inevitably, the last mile deliveries are partly responsible for degrading the environment. Towards more environmentally friendly city logistics, using different means of transport has been tested; one among them is drones. A new paper aims better to understand the use of drones for last-mile deliveries. More …
City logistics must be organized more sustainably and eventually decarbonize. To this end, the focus is mainly on electrification as a technical measure, whereby electric equivalents eventually substitute conventional vehicles. There are, however, numerous decarbonization strategies for city logistics, some of which aim to reduce the number of vehicle movements by changing demand, more collaboration …
Is it possible for flexible applications of infrastructure to help cope with the demand for space? In a new paper, researchers tried to answer how different forms of flexibility can impact the societal costs of infrastructure development on passenger transport hubs. The value is used to determine these impacts for an explorative research option. This …
On behalf of the Austrian Post, the Federal Environment Agency analyzed the climate effects of online and stationary retail purchases. In addition, the economic impact of national and international online retailing was examined. The result: climate-friendly parcel delivery offers potential savings in greenhouse gas emissions. If customers also use domestic online retailers, this positively affects …
Parcel lockers have emerged as a potential solution to the last-mile delivery challenges and are believed to reduce delivery times and traffic congestion. However, there has been no empirical analyses of the impacts of parcel lockers (in larger residential buildings) on delivery times. Researchers found that using lockers caused a 50–60% drop in the average …
Companies worldwide have been working for over a decade to develop drone technologies that will work together with ground transportation to improve last-mile delivery. Wing Delivery Network’s ultimate vision is to deliver people’s packages more efficiently and safely as part of an automated logistics system that moves boxes by the millions. The economics of drone …
Given trends in urbanization, e-commerce, active mobility, and modal shifts, streets have sprung up as scenes of conflict where competing demands for curbside space have increased. Because public space is limited, urban transport planners are called to solve public space conflicts by defining how much space is allocated to specific users to achieve sustainable cities. …