by Walther Ploos van Amstel
The Physical Internet (PI) is arguably the most ambitious vision in transport logistics: fully consolidated freight flows from independent shippers, moving through open, connected, shared networks — just like data packets on the digital internet. But how far has practice actually come? A paper by Van Duin, Anand, Moolenburgh, Quak and Tavasszy in the City …
Every city depends on goods to function, yet urban planning scholarship pays them little attention. That is the sobering conclusion of a systematic review by Heleen Buldeo Rai (VUB), Bram Kin (HAN), and Paul Buijs (University of Groningen), published in Cities (2026) and developed within the SPRONG LILS collaboration. The authors reviewed 82 articles from …
Cities regulate urban freight as if every street and every delivery were the same. New research from the University of Seville, published in the European Transport Research Review (Muñuzuri et al., 2026), shows why that approach fails — and what micro-regulation could look like instead. The researchers studied 104 delivery operations across 22 streets in …
Speed is the holy grail of food delivery. Platforms like Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat push hard on short delivery times, with real consequences for riders: time pressure in dense urban traffic, and elevated exposure to crashes and near-misses. New research from TU Delft (Kavta, Sharif Azadeh and de Almeida Correia, published in Transport …
Urban freight is competing for an increasingly scarce resource: curb space. The growth of e-commerce, grocery deliveries, on-demand services and ride-hailing has intensified pressure on city streets, while many cities continue to redesign public space primarily for pedestrians, cyclists and public transport. The result is a growing mismatch between freight demand and curb availability, leading …
Urban freight policy typically operates in silos. Vehicle access regulations — low-emission zones, weight restrictions, time windows, congestion charges — are designed and evaluated separately from loading zone management. A new study from Budapest University of Technology and Economics asks whether that separation reflects reality, or whether cities that invest in one tend to invest …
Les Echos writes: “Amazon, Shein et les autres… Les livraisons de colis représentent déjà 20 % du trafic routier en Ile-de-France”. True or fake news? A new research note from L’Institut Paris Region puts a striking number on a trend most of us feel intuitively: 315 million parcels were delivered in Île-de-France in 2025, the result of …
The transition to electric urban freight vehicles is often presented as a straightforward vehicle-replacement exercise: replace diesel vans and trucks with electric ones, and emissions disappear. In reality, the challenge is much broader. Vehicle range, charging time, route planning, grid capacity, and charging infrastructure all become critical operational variables. A recent Italian study examines one …
Rabobank examines the state of online supermarket sales and its implications for logistics. Online grocery shopping has firmly established itself across Europe. That is the main conclusion of a recent RaboResearch report. After the turbulent growth years around the COVID pandemic and the sharp correction that followed, the market is now normalizing. Consumers treat online …
A new study from TU Delft researchers, published in Urban Planning (2026), offers practical insights into how cities can use urban space — including temporarily vacant plots — to keep materials circulating rather than ending up as waste. The research examines three cases in Amsterdam where the municipality used storage spaces of varying scales and …