Environmental and energy benefits of freight delivery consolidation in urban area.

PDFTech ReportCFIRE 03-19DTRT06-G-0020168k044Delivery vehiclesLogisticsConsolidationVehicle miles of travelEnergy consumptionFeasibility analysisUrban areasCostsFreight trafficEnvironmental impactsUnited StatesNational Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education (U.S.)Lin, JaneChen, QinKawamura, KazuyaNational Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education (U.S.)United States. Dept. of Transportation. Research and Innovative Technology AdministrationNTL-FREIGHT-FREIGHTNTL-ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT-Environment ImpactsNTL-PLANNING AND POLICY-PLANNING AND POLICYUS Transportation CollectionAmong new, innovative city logistics strategies, delivery cooperation has received increasing academic andpractical attention mostly in Europe and Japan. The idea is to establish cooperation among the suppliers, carriersand the customers through Urban Consolidation Center (UCC), a public facility usually located at the cityboundary; with proper consolidation of loads and routing, the goods are then sent to the customers in the urbanarea with cleaner vehicles and less vehicle miles traveled (VMT). In this study, we investigated the feasibility ofUCC in an urban setting at the tactical level with respect to total logistics cost and environmental impact. In otherwords, whether UCC could reduce the logistics cost which involves the monetary costs for activities fromproduction to consumption, while maintaining acceptable level of energy consumption and vehicular emissions.It is found that under certain conditions, UCC may become a favorable last-mile urban delivery solution to thecurrent one without a UCC. Especially the benefits of UCC strategies become significant when the customer rentcost is high and UCC terminal operation cost is low. UCC becomes more beneficial as the economic scale isgreater (i.e., higher numbers of customers and suppliers). In addition, public subsidy for UCC terminals wouldmake urban cooperative delivery more competitive, resulting in lower truck VMT and emissions in the urbanarea