Modelling external transport costs in distribution networks

This work investigates the “Green Impact” concern in the transport sector. Generally companies which work to reduce their environmental impact act on three subsequent levels: optimising the existent networks and flows; optimising modes of transport; increasing efficiency of routes and journeys. Similarly, some of the most widespread actions meant to decrease transport pollution costs consist in minimizing empty running of the trucks, encouraging co-operative retailer distribution, running more efficient vehicles: all measures that, before abating pollution and congestion costs, have the substantial benefit of pulling down the transport operative costs directly paid by companies. This article gathers many of the main contributions on the theme in literature, showing how dispersed data regarding full transport cost appear to be. An analytical aggregation of the different results is offered, in order to obtain and homogeneous transport cost function, and several applications have been introduced to explain the proposed models