by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Digital twins are among the most promising ideas in urban logistics, and among the most overhyped. The pitch is familiar: a live virtual copy of your delivery operation that lets you simulate, reroute, and optimize in real time. Fewer failed deliveries, fuller vans, lower emissions. A new paper in Research in Transportation Business & Management …
Tanaka, Sakai, Hyodo and Kodera (Journal of Transport Geography, 2026) tackle a persistent gap in city logistics: local governments are typically responsible for zoning, curbside management and local infrastructure, yet they have far less experience and data on freight than on passenger transport, and struggle to know which freight issues to prioritize or how. The …
The Horizon Europe project NEXTLOGIC has released its first major deliverable (D1.1), Urban Logistics Challenges, a report that combines a state-of-the-art review with real-world benchmarking and primary data collection across the project’s eight EU Mission Cities: Aarhus, Bergamo, Differdange, Dublin, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, The Hague and Wroclaw. Coordinated by the University of Luxembourg and led on …
A new McKinsey report by Matthias Kässer, Tobias Schneiderbauer and Henrik Becker delivers a sobering reality check for anyone tracking freight decarbonization in Europe: despite nine years of model launches and more than 45 zero-emission (ZE) truck models now on the market, new registrations of ZE trucks remained below 5 percent as of 2025. That’s …
A new study in Case Studies on Transport Policy by Annette Rondaij, Bram Kin, Hans Quak, and colleagues (LiLS partners: Dutch TNO, HAN, and BUAS) offers a timely corrective to the electrification-first narrative that dominates urban freight policy. While battery electric vehicles remain the default answer to decarbonizing city logistics, the authors argue that measures …
At the WCTR conference in Toulouse, we discussed the role of city logistics in 15-minute cities. The discussion started, as it always does, with data: what do we need to know to provide the right solutions? Counting transport movements is nice. It is not sufficient. The 15-minute city promises daily needs within a short walk …
A new report from Copenhagen Economics, commissioned by PostEurop and published in May 2026, makes a clear-cut argument: the EU e-commerce parcel delivery market functions well, and sector-specific regulation would likely do more harm than good. However, the PostEurop-commissioned report concludes EU parcel markets are competitive, but self-reported operator data and the client’s direct interest …
A paper presented at City Logistics 2025 (Winkelmann, Nandakumar, Spruijtenburg, de Bok — TNO and TU Delft) puts a number on something many city logistics practitioners have suspected but rarely quantified: zero-emission zones (ZEZs) can improve air quality in the city center while quietly shifting the burden onto poorer neighborhoods nearby. The Netherlands has committed …
For many years, Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) focused primarily on moving people. Walking, cycling, public transport, and private cars dominated the discussion, while urban freight was often reduced to a few pages on deliveries or low-emission zones. The third edition of the Guidelines for Developing and Implementing a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan marks a …
Amsterdam is quietly building one of Europe’s most interesting experiments in urban freight: moving household and commercial waste over its canals instead of through its streets. What started as a modest pilot in the Red Light District in 2021 (electric barges collecting garbage bags twice a week, fed by small electric carts from the surrounding …