by Walther Ploos van Amstel
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 …
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 …
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. …
Today Nicolas Brusselaers (VU Brussels) promoted his thesis about the impact of off-site construction transport on air quality. The effects of air pollution are responsible for more than 364.200 premature deaths in Europe each year. Most urban areas still exceed the NOx and PM WHO air quality guidelines, of which a large share of pollutants …
E-commerce is a rapidly evolving sector. With 94% of Belgian inhabitants having access to the internet, 80% of them are e-shoppers. Additionally, 7 in 10 Belgians shopped at least once to up to five times during the past three months to the survey conducted in 2021 by EUROSTAT. Impact of e-commerce deliveries The consumers’ convenience …
We are living on a finite planet. Mankind is overstepping planetary boundaries, however. In 2021, worldwide consumption exceeded the yearly bio-capacity of the Earth (what we call the overshoot day) on the 29th of July. The situation is far worse for industrialized countries: In 2022, Belgium reached that overshoot day on the 26th of March. …
Scientists are increasingly concerned by the health impact of air pollution produced by the wear of vehicle tires. The particles are especially damaging due to the toxic chemicals they are made from, say scientists from Imperial College London. The Guardian reports about it. The warning follows UK government data showing that significantly more tiny pollution particles now come …
Efficient freight transportation is necessary for the economic development of markets in metropolitan areas. Without it, the cost of goods increases, and larger negative externalities are produced, negatively impacting the quality of life. In this context, the efficiency of supply chains is strongly influenced by the spatial patterns of economic activities, given the role, freight …