A Simulation-Based Evaluation of a Cargo-Hitching Service for E-Commerce Using Mobility-on-Demand Vehicles

Time-sensitive parcel deliveries—shipments requested for delivery in a day or less—are an increasingly important aspect of urban logistics. It is challenging to deal with these deliveries from a carrier perspective. These require additional planning constraints, preventing the efficient consolidation of deliveries that is possible when demand is well known in advance. Furthermore, such time-sensitive deliveries are requested to a wider spatial scope than retail centers, including homes and offices. Therefore, an increase in such deliveries is considered to exacerbate negative externalities, such as congestion and emissions. One of the solutions is to leverage spare capacity in passenger transport modes. This concept is often denominated as cargo hitching. While there are various system designs, it is crucial that such a solution does not deteriorate the quality of service of passenger trips. This research aims to evaluate the use of mobility-on-demand (MOD) services that perform same-day parcel deliveries. To test the MOD-based solutions, we utilize a high-resolution agent- and activity-based simulation platform of passenger and freight flows. E-commerce demand carrier data collected in Singapore are used to characterize simulated parcel delivery demand. We explore operational scenarios that aim to minimize the adverse effects of fulfilling deliveries with MOD service vehicles on passenger flows. Adverse effects are measured in fulfillment, wait, and travel times. A case study on Singapore indicates that the MOD services have potential to fulfill a considerable amount of parcel deliveries and decrease freight vehicle traffic and total vehicle kilometers travelled without compromising the quality of MOD for passenger travel. Insights into the operational performance of the cargo-hitching service are also provided.

Assesment of the potential of cargo bikes and electrification for last-mile parcel delivery by means of simulation of urban freight flows

Background The paper presents a simulation model for freight. In the paper, this model is applied to understand the impacts of electric vans and cargo bikes for the last-mile delivery of parcels. Cargo bikes are electrically assisted vehicles that distribute parcels from micro depots located close to the final customers by means of short tours. The parcels are sent from the major distribution center to micro depots in vans (called feeders). Materials and methods An agent-based model is used for the purpose of the paper. The model is based on the disaggregation of commodity flows to represent trucks (for all commodities) and individual shipments (for parcel deliveries). The model represents microscopically every freight vehicle in the study area. Results The simulation of various scenarios with different shares of cargo bikes and electric vans assesses the impacts of electrification and cargo bikes. The use of cargo bikes to deliver parcels allows to reduce the number of motorized vehicles, although the presence of large parcels requires that at least half of deliveries by vans are still required. The shift to cargo bikes represents a slight increase in the total operating time to deliver the parcel demand. With low shares of cargo bikes, the total distance traveled increases, since the reduction of van tours cannot compensate the additional feeder trips from distribution centers to micro depots. The cargo bikes also do not reduce the number of vehicles for the served area, but modify the composition of vehicle types. Low noise, smaller, low emission vehicles increase, while delivery vans are reduced. Conclusion Both cargo bikes and electric vans are able to reduce CO2 emissions, even after accounting for the emissions related to electricity production.

Sensitivity Analysis of Emission Models of Parcel Lockers vs. Home Delivery Based on HBEFA

Global concerns about the environmental effects (e.g., pollution, land use, noise) of last-mile deliveries are increasing. Parcel lockers are seen as an option to reduce these external effects of last-mile deliveries. The contributions of this paper are threefold: firstly, the research studies simulating the emissions caused by parcel delivery to lockers are summarized. Secondly, a demand model for parcel deliveries in New York City (NYC) is created for 365 days and delivery trips to lockers and homes are optimized for 20 “real-world” scenarios. Thirdly, using the emission factors included in the HandBook Emission Factors for Road Transport (HBEFA) database, the maximum percentage of customers who could pick up a parcel by car from parcel lockers that would result in fewer total emissions (driving customers + walking customers) than if home deliveries were adopted is calculated for various pollutants and scenario assumptions (i.e., street types, temperature, parking duration, level of service and vehicle drivetrain). This paper highlights how small changes in the calibration can significantly change the results and therefore using average values for emission factors or only considering one pollutant like most studies may not be appropriate.

Exploring the Relationship between Locational and Household Characteristics and E-Commerce Home Delivery Demand

The rapid growth in online shopping and associated parcel deliveries prompts investigation of the factors that contribute to parcel delivery demand. In this study, we evaluated the influence of locational and household characteristics on e-commerce home delivery demand. While past research has largely focused on the impacts of the adoption of online shopping using individual/household survey data, we made use of data from an e-commerce carrier. A linear regression model was estimated considering factors such as degree of urbanization, transit and shopping accessibility, and household attributes. The results both confirm and contradict prior research findings, highlighting the potential for a non-negligible influence of the local context on demand for parcel deliveries.

Implementing Horizontal Cooperation in Public Transport and Parcel Deliveries: The Cooperative Share-A-Ride Problem

The static share-a-ride problem (SARP) consists of handling people and parcels in an integrated way through the same vehicle, which provides a shared trip between an origin and a destination, in response to requests received in advance. When multiple providers compete on the same market (for instance, within the same city or region), horizontal cooperation can be an efficient strategy to consolidate all requests and to optimize the total payoff. This situation gives rise to the cooperative SARP (coop-SARP). In this problem, multiple depots and heterogeneous vehicles must be considered and different cooperation levels may be agreed upon by service providers. In this paper, we propose a new mathematical programming formulation for cooperative SARP along with theoretical bounds. Moreover, through numerical experiments and ad hoc statistics, we analyze the benefits of different levels of horizontal cooperation between service providers. The results show that cooperation leads to reduced travel times and to improved vehicle occupancy rates, service levels, and profits, which make such a cooperative system even more appealing for service providers.

EVALUATION OF MACRO FACTORS FOR E-COMMERCE DEPLOYMENT IN THE DEVELOPED COUNTRIES AND UKRAINE: POTENTIAL AND LIMITATIONS

This paper presents the analytical study results revealing the key factors for e-commerce deployment. We focused on macro level of the considered topic. Firstly, we defined that e-commerce deployment is closely related to current trend in population urbanization. We revealed a significant increase in urban population and along with that the e-commerce revenue grew up as well in last ten years. This trend has a positive dynamic. Given that secondly, the e-commerce deployment has forced the environmental pollution due to automobile transport utilization when the low consolidated home deliveries are implemented. We defined that this negative impact has to be leveled by a significant reduction of two- and three-wheels vehicles usage till 2040. Moreover, the light vans and trucks usage with fossil energy sources should be reduced till 2055 as well. Besides this policy, we observed that the technological measures can be implemented, namely in urban transportation. Thus, a two-echelon supply chain can be introduced allowing to make the parcel deliveries more consolidated. This should provide a reduction in vehicle mileage travelled resulting in more sustainable transportation. Special attention in this study has been made to analysis an e-commerce deployment in a developing economy. Ukraine has been considered as a case study. We revealed a significant growth in purchase number and commodities range bought in the internet in last seven years. As e-commerce can be implemented via several delivery channels, we have determined that for Ukraine the post office-based delivery option is more popular than a home delivery. We revealed a non-linear growth of opened new post offices within Ukraine area. Along with that we determined the same picture for parcels number delivered during last seven years. Having a such trend we can state that e-commerce deployment is inclined by a list of macro factors and has a great potential for Ukraine economy. In these conditions the transportation engineers and decision makers should unite their activity to promote the sustainable delivery services.

Dynamic Planning of Mobile Service Teams’ Mission Subject to Orders Uncertainty Constraints

This paper considers the dynamic vehicle routing problem where a fleet of vehicles deals with periodic deliveries of goods or services to spatially dispersed customers over a given time horizon. Individual customers may only be served by predefined (dedicated) suppliers. Each vehicle follows a pre-planned separate route linking points defined by the customer location and service periods when ordered deliveries are carried out. Customer order specifications and their services time windows as well as vehicle travel times are dynamically recognized over time. The objective is to maximize a number of newly introduced or modified requests, being submitted dynamically throughout the assumed time horizon, but not compromising already considered orders. Therefore, the main question is whether a newly reported delivery request or currently modified/corrected one can be accepted or not. The considered problem arises, for example, in systems in which garbage collection or DHL parcel deliveries as well as preventive maintenance requests are scheduled and implemented according to a cyclically repeating sequence. It is formulated as a constraint satisfaction problem implementing the ordered fuzzy number formalism enabling to handle the fuzzy nature of variables through an algebraic approach. Computational results show that the proposed solution outperforms commonly used computer simulation methods.