Abstract: Climate change is related with weather extremes, which may cause damages to infrastructure used by freight transport services. Heavy rainfall may lead to flooding and damage to railway lines, roads and inland waterways. Extreme drought may lead to extremely low water levels, which prevent safe navigation by inland barges. Wet and dry periods may alternate, leaving little time to repair damages. In some Western and Middle-European countries, barges have a large share in freight transport. If a main waterway is out of service, then alternatives are called for. Volume- and price-wise, trucking is not a viable alternative. Could railways be that alternative? The paper was written after the unusually long dry summer period in Europe in 2022. It deals with the question: If the Rhine, a major European waterway becomes locally inaccessible, could railways (temporarily) play a larger role in freight transport? It is a continuation of our earlier research. It contains a case study, the data of which was fed into a simulation model. The model deals with technical details like service specification route length, energy consumption and emissions. The study points to interesting rail services to keep Europe’s freight on the move. Their realization may be complex especially in terms of logistics and infrastructure, but is there an alternative?
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The transition from diesel-driven urban freight transport towards more electric urban freight transport turns out to be challenging in practice. A major concern for transport operators is how to find a reliable charging strategy for a larger electric vehicle fleet that provides flexibility based on different daily mission profiles within that fleet, while also minimizing costs. This contribution assesses the trade-off between a large battery pack and opportunity charging with regard to costs and operational constraints. Based on a case study with 39 electric freight vehicles that have been used by a parcel delivery company and a courier company in daily operations for over a year, various scenarios have been analyzed by means of a TCO analysis. Although a large battery allows for more flexibility in planning, opportunity charging can provide a feasible alternative, especially in the case of varying mission profiles. Additional personnel costs during opportunity charging can be avoided as much as possible by a well-integrated charging strategy, which can be realized by a reservation system that minimizes the risk of occupied charging stations and a dense network of charging stations.
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In this paper, we present the challenges, failures and successes on urban freight transportation. We first identify the various involved stakeholders with their interests. Then we evaluate a large number of urban freight transport initiatives and identify lessons learned, which are distinguished in policy, logistics and technology based views. Further, we present a vision for urban freight transportation, which is not only based on the lessons learned, but also on actual market research reports and recent findings.
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Urban freight transport is frequently censured for its unsustainable impacts. Although our current urbanized civilization requires an efficient freight transport system in order to sustain it, the common perception is that urban freight transport has negative impacts on all sustainability issues: social, economic and environmental (also known as the triple P: people, profi t and planet). Urban freight transport, or urban goods movement, is identifi ed as having the following unsustainable eff ects on: people, such as the consequences of traffi c accidents, noise nuisance, visual intrusion, smell, vibration and the consequences of (local) emissions, such as NOx and PM10, on public health; profit, such as inefficiencies (especially for carriers) due to regulations and restrictions, congestion and reduced city accessibility; the planet, such as the contribution of transport to global pollutant emissions (CO2) and the consequences for global warming.
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Authorities aim at making the urban freight system more sustainable. The most common instruments to do so are regulation or stimulation of good practices, by offering subsidies or initiating projects together with the private parties that are responsible for actually performing urban freight transport operations. This contribution examines the possibilities for (local) authorities to use their market role, i.e. being a big procurer of goods and services in a city that result in many urban freight transport trips, to stimulate more sustainable urban freight transportation. Procurement is usually not linked to transport and data from procured goods and services do not provide sufficient insights to estimates the impacts of deliveries and trips related to the procured goods and services. This contribution discusses two cases in which (local) authorities try to make the urban freight transport that results from their procurement activities visible, via different methods, such as delivery service plans, and spend analyses. The cases of Rotterdam (in the project BuyZET) and for the logistics hub in The Hague show the first results of how (local) authorities can act to improve urban freight transport once the trips caused by procured goods and services are clearly mapped. © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
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Cities’ sustainability strategies seem to aim at the reduction of the negative impacts of urban freight transport. In the past decades, many public and private initiatives have struggled to gain broad stakeholder support and thus remain viable. Researchers and practitioners have only recently recognised stakeholder acceptance of urban freight solutions as a challenge. A first step in achieving convergence is to understand stakeholder needs, preferences and viewpoints. This paper proposes and applies an approach to identify the main stakeholder perspectives in the domain of urban freight transport. We use Q-methodology, which originates from social sciences and psychology, to record subjective positions and identify the dominant ones. We explain the approach, operationalise the method for the domain of urban freight transport and apply it to stakeholder groups in the Netherlands. We find four dominant perspectives, reflecting how stakeholders normally take positions in the urban freight dialogue. Important findings concern disparities between industry associations and some of their membership, divergent views about the expected role of public administration, and the observation that the behaviour of shippers and Logistics Service Providers (LSP) appears to be inconsistent with their beliefs. All these factors together can act as a barrier to the implementation of urban freight consolidation concepts. The Q-methodology is valuable for eliciting perspectives in urban freight and is a promising tool to facilitate stakeholder dialogue and, eventually, convergence.
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Abstract: Last few years the hindrance, accidents, pollution and other negative side effects of construction projects and namely construction transport have become an issue particularly in urban areas across Europe such as in London, and in the Netherlands as well, including the cities of Utrecht, Rotterdam and Amsterdam. Municipalities have issued new legislation and stricter conditions for vehicles to be able to access cities and city centres in particular and accessibility of older and polluting vehicles. Considerate clients, public as well private, have started developing tender policies to encourage contractors to reduce the environmental impact of construction projects. Contractors and third party logistics providers have started applying consolidation centres. These developments have shown considerable reductions of number of vehicles needed to deliver goods and to transport workers to site. In addition these developments have led to increased transport efficiency, labour productivity and cost reductions on site as well as down the supply chain. Besides these developments have led to increased innovations in the field of logistics planning software, use of ICT , and handling hardware and equipment. This paper gives an overview of current developments and applications in the field of construction logistics in the Netherlands, and in a few project cases in particular. Those cases are underway as part of an ongoing applied research project and studied by using an ethnographic participative action research approach. The case findings and project results show initial advantages how the projects, the firms involved and the environment can profit from the advancement of logistics management leading to reduced environmental impact and increased efficiencies of construction transport.
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Purpose Electric freight vehicles (EFVs) are one of the solutions to improve city logistics’ sustainability. EFVs, that are electric powered light and heavy vehicles with a number plate, have the potential to make zero emission city logistics possible within the urban area. However, although trials have been undertaken for the last years, large-scale usage of EFVs in city logistics does not occur yet. EFVs are technically possi- ble, but the implementation of EFVs in practice is relatively limited. Design This chapter examines by reviewing current and past EFV implementations, what are the challenges, barriers and success factors for EFVs in city logistics operations. EFVs have especially positive envir- onmental effects, but are overall usually more expensive (especially in procurement) than conventional vehicles. Besides, other technical and operational issues remain to be solved, and many uncertainties still exist on long-term usage. Findings Three main barriers for large-scale EFV uptake are identi- fied. The current logistics concepts are developed for conventional vehi- cles and should be redesigned to fit EFVs better. Local authorities’ support is essential in order to find a positive (or not too negative) business case. And EFV implementation requires companies that want to be sustainable. This contribution presents examples of how some companies or authorities deal with these barriers. Value This chapter concludes by identifying elements that are necessary for acceleration of EFV uptake in city logistics operations.
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In the city of Amsterdam commercial transport is responsible for 15% of vehicles, 34% of traffic’s CO2 emissions and 62% of NOx emissions. The City of Amsterdam plans to improve traffic flows using real time traffic data and data about loading and unloading zones. In this paper, we present, reflect, and discuss the results of two projects from the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences with research partners from 2016 till 2018. The ITSLOG and Sailor projects aim to analyze and test the benefits and challenges of connecting ITS and traffic management to urban freight transport, by using real-time data about loading and unloading zone availability for rerouting trucks. New technologies were developed and tested in collaboration with local authorities, transport companies and a food retailer. This paper presents and discusses the opportunities and challenges faced in developing and implementing this new technology, as well as the role played by different stakeholders. In both projects, the human factor was critical for the implementation of new technologies in practice.
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