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Curbing urban logistics - the interactions between urban logistics and spatial planning.

Development of city logistics maturity model for municipality performance measurement.

Municipalities play an important role in tackling city logistics related matters, having many instruments at hand. However, it is not self-evident that all municipalities use these instruments to their full potential. A method to measure city logistics performance of municipalities can help in creating awareness and guidance, to ultimately lead to a more sustainable environment for inhabitants and businesses. Subsequently, this research is focused on a maturity model as a tool to assess the maturity level of a municipality for its performance related city logistics process management. Various criteria for measuring city logistics performance are studied and based on that the model is populated through three focus fields (Technical, Social and Corporate, and Policy), branching out into six areas of development: Information and communication technology, urban logistics planning, Stakeholder communication, Public Private Partnerships, Subsidisation and incentivisation, and Regulations. The CL3M model was tested for three municipalities, namely, municipality of Utrecht, Den Bosch and Groningen. Through these maturity assessments it became evident the model required specificity complementary to the existing assessment interview, and thus a SWOT analysis should be added as a conclusion during the maturity assessment.

Reorganizing city logistics to reduce urban movements

To realize a more sustainable city logistics system the focus should go beyond reducing emissions only. Next to zero emission vehicles, reduction of urban logistics trips is required in light of several urban, environmental and economic challenges. This contribution focuses on the role of hubs and decoupling points, where logistics flows to and from a city are decoupled from the flows in a city, to optimize the city logistics. For six distinctive hubs or decoupling point concepts, we examine the potential under current market and legal conditions. By decomposing city logistics in subsegments and urban logistics trip structures, we estimate the realistic trip reduction potential of decouple points in the current city logistics conditions.

Curbing Urban Logistics – a study of the interactions between urban logistics and spatial planning

Efforts to reduce negative externalities of urban logistics vehicle movements often concentrate on two aspects; organizing logistics more efficiently in order to reduce the number of incoming vehicles in urban areas and reducing the emissions of vehicles within urban areas. The stopping practices are an underexposed area, in research and spatial planning. Even if movements into an area are organized more efficiently and vehicles might be zero emission, at the end of the day, logistics vehicles need to stop close to their destination to deliver goods or perform services. Herewith those vehicles put a claim upon – increasingly scarce – urban space with possible subsequential negative effects for both urban residents and drivers. This research develops a typology for urban stopping practices of logistics vehicles, including temporal and spatial aspects. Based on a survey with drivers, and interviews with experts and policy makers, the potential of different interventions to reduce the negative externalities of stopping practices is assessed. Despite the impact on policy goals, urban logistics stopping receives little attention from public stakeholders and is largely left to self-organization. Digitization and (bottomup) enforcement are interesting interventions, while drivers also indicate that more space allocated to logistics functions is inevitable. The best mix of interventions, including allocation of locations and enforcement, would both be high and low technology. Cities can benefit from a more desired situation by looking into physical interventions before digital interventions are ready for deployment.

Capturing a hidden part of urban traffic: an approach to get a grip on urban goods movement.

Limited data is available on the size of urban goods movement and its impact on numerous aspects with respect to livability such as emissions and spatial impact. The latter becomes more important in densifying cities. This makes it challenging to implement effective measures that aim to reduce the negative impact of urban good movement and to monitor their impact. Furthermore, urban goods movement is diverse and because of this a tailored approach is required to take effective measures. Minimizing the negative impact of a heavy truck in construction logistics requires a different approach than a parcel delivery van. Partly due to a lack of accurate data, this diversity is often not considered when taking measures. This study describes an approach how to use available data on urban traffic, and how to enrich these with other sources, which is used to gain insight into the decomposition (number of trips and kilometers per segment and vehicle type). The usefulness of having this insight is shown for different applications by two case studies: one to estimate the effect of a zero-emission zone in the city of Utrecht and another to estimate the logistics requirements in a car-free area development.

Integrating city logistics in spatial planning

There is a lot of attention for the reduction of city logistics’ emissions. But also if city logistics’ vehicles are zero emission, the vehicles remain present in urban areas. Zero emission vehicles also occupy valuable urban space during unloading on the road and on sidewalks. Despite the spatial impact of city logistics, it is rarely considered in spatial planning. Based on four case studies, we explore possibilities to actively integrate city logistics in spatial planning policies and practices in order to reduce nuisance, but also to enhance efficiency of deliveries. In the end, spatial planning determines the physical urban conditions in which city logistics operations are taking place for many years. From the results we distil a research agenda to bridge the gap between city logistics as a traffic issue and its integration in spatial planning policies.