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City logistics has increasing importance in relation to the sustainable development of urban transport. It is therefore very important that all processes related to the city logistics should be optimally planned in advance. Many software companies offer a variety of software tools, which can be used for optimization and planning in city logistic tasks. This article aims to define and describe the various processes that take place in city logistics and then demonstrate, how selected software tools can help in optimizing the whole process of city logistics. Městská logistika má stále větší význam ve vztahu k udržitelnému rozvoji městské dopravy. Je proto velmi důležité, aby všechny procesy související s logistikou města byly optimálně předem naplánovány. Mnoho softwarových společností nabízí různé softwarové nástroje, které lze použít pro optimalizaci a plánování v úlohách městské logistiky. Tento článek si klade za cíl definovat a popsat různé procesy, které probíhají v městské logistice a následně ukázat, jak mohou vybrané softwarové nástroje pomoci při optimalizaci celého procesu městské logistiky.

Urban delivering is facing some significant changes that are heading towards unsustainable scenarios. At the same time, local administrations as well as city planners are involved in promoting new solutions that can help to improve city sustainability and livability. In this context, electric micromobility could offer a valuable contribution. In fact, electric micromobility systems such as e-bikes and e-scooters, both at an individual level or as a shared service, could represent sustainable mobility options for city logistics, especially for specific classes of parcel delivery, users’ characteristics and travelled distances. Considering both the growth of e-commerce and the spreading of new options for delivering parcels (e.g., crowdshipping), electric micromobility (e-bikes and e-scooters) could support the penetration and acceptability of such new options, limiting the impacts of delivery operations. After analysis of the current e-commerce background and a review of the current delivery options to satisfy delivery demand, crowdshipping stands out. Thus, the potential shift from private transport to e-micromobility for crowdshipping is investigated, assuming that potential crowdshippers may, mainly, be commuters. The methodology is based on using probabilistic-behavioral models developed within random utility theory, which allow the potential shift towards e-micromobility for commuting to be forecasted. The models were calibrated in Rome, where more than 200 interviews with commuters were available.

E-grocery is the fastest growing e-commerce segment, while still a niche market. Notwithstanding the channel choice when buying groceries might have relevant transport and environmental implications, little attention is paid to demand analysis. The paper fills this research gap, by using stated preferences to estimate market shares for e-grocery, distinguishing between home deliveries and click&pick, using the in-store option as a reference, and by considering a case study in Norway. It investigates the role of various purchase characteristics (i.e. product price, service cost, lead-time, time window, travel time and product range) when choosing which purchase channel to use. Results suggest that the most important characteristics for consumers are related to price, in particular product price, but there is also significant heterogeneity in preferences within the sample. Scenario simulations allow estimating transport and environmental impacts deriving from channel market share changes. This information can be useful for developing both managerial strategies to increase e-grocery market share and public policy interventions to minimize negative externalities.

In this paper, we introduce a new city logistics problem arising in the last mile distribution of e-commerce. The problem involves two levels of routing problems. The first requires a design of the routes for a vehicle fleet located at the depots to transport the customer demands to a subset of the satellites. The second level concerns the routing of a vehicle fleet from the satellites to serve all of the customers. A feature of the problem is that customers may provide different delivery options, allowing them to pick up their packages at intermediate pickup facilities. The objective is to minimize the total distribution cost. To solve the problem, a hybrid multi-population genetic algorithm is proposed. An effective heuristic algorithm is designed to generate initial solutions, and several procedures are designed to better manage the population as well as exploit and explore the solution space. The proposed method is tested on a large family of instances, including a real-world instance; the computational results obtained show the effectiveness of the different components of the algorithm.

Despite the huge growth in online purchases, e-grocery (i.e. ordering grocery online) was still limited in scope in Italy so far. More recently, its growth has been substantial and 2020 witnessed a huge increase due to COVID-19-related mobility restrictions. In principle, e-grocery could reduce the number of shopping trips, yet an exponential increase in shipping and deliveries could have a negative impact on the environment. In order to explore the willingness to e-grocery, and delivery preferences (self-delivery, home delivered grocery or collected in a specific place) - and estimate their market shares - a stated preference survey was carried in Rome and Milan. Respondents were asked about their grocery shopping habits and to choose among different shopping and delivery options. Discrete choice modelling allows investigating preference heterogeneity and estimating willingness to pay measures. Main results indicate that respondents, characterised by distinct socio-economic, attitudinal, and geographical elements, react differently to attribute variations for alternative grocery shopping channels. Scenario simulations can help in defining successful business-strategies and possible solutions to external costs. Under this respect, results suggest that the best strategy to increase e-grocery shares in the two cities should be non-monetary, but rather aimed at expanding the product range available online.

Cities crave innovative logistics solutions dealing with the requirements of the ‘on demand economy’. The paper estimates the willingness to act as a crowdshipper (supply) and to buy a crowdshipping service (demand) to get goods delivered/picked-up in the last mile B2C e-commerce situation. Specifically, it innovates by considering an environmental-friendly crowdshipping based on the use of the mass transit network of the city where parcels customers/crowdshippers pick-up/drop-off goods in automated parcel lockers located either inside the transit stations or in the surroundings. This issue is very important since “standard” crowdshipping is usually not able to reduce congestion and polluting emissions due to the dedicated trips performed using private motorized vehicles. The paper rests on an extensive stated preference survey. The hypothetical scenarios used to acquire both demand (customers’) and supply (crowdshippers’) preferences make use of the most relevant attributes emerging from a preliminary investigation performed in the study context. The investigation is performed in the city of Rome and the metro is the transit system considered. The results are useful in understanding and quantifying the potential of this freight transport strategy for e-commerce in an urban context and in providing local policy makers with a good knowledge base for its future development.

Many cities of different size and in different areas of the world have successfully tested the introduction of off-hour deliveries (OHD) on a voluntary basis, reporting positive effects, both on freight distribution efficiency and sustainability. However, those initiatives have not been implemented so far at a large scale. This paper investigates OHD potential in Rome, focusing on one of the most important barriers to its adoption, i.e. stakeholder acceptability. The study investigates stakeholders' preferences for different OHD configurations using both a qualitative approach, based on in-depth interviews, and a quantitative analysis, based on an interactive multi-actor multi-criteria analysis. Results show that stakeholders prefer a solution where OHD are jointly implemented together with one or more urban consolidation centres. This preliminary analysis paves the way for further technical/economic evaluations needed for OHD implementation in Rome. Stakeholders’ involvement is of outmost importance to understand their heterogeneous preferences and increase their awareness of urban freight transport problems, with the overall aim to foster behaviour change.

In city logistics, courier express and parcel services (CEP) deal with last mile deliveries in an urban environment. CEP route vehicles to deliver parcels to costumers distributed in the cities area. Customers expect fast and reliable services to reasonable prices. As a result, CEP have to plan and execute their routing efficiently. In a city logistic environment, CEP faces several challenges. Especially, travel times between customers are not deterministic but uncertain and differ during the day regarding traffic volumes and stochastic events like congestion. Further, city traffic flows are controlled by traffic control management (TM). TM decisions additionally impact travel times for CEP. This paper shows the impact of TM decisions to travel times and emphasizes the benefit of cooperational planning between CEP and TM.

This paper investigates the potential for off-hour deliveries in the city of Rome. It focuses on retailers that play a fundamental role in the decision making process often determining delivery times. It explores their preferences for three off-hour delivery prototypes and inquires retailers' willingness to adopt them, both with and without the provision of dedicated incentives. Finally, it analyses retailers’ reactions to a hypothetical scenario where a mandatory off-hour delivery policy is imposed. The overall results show a good inclination towards off-hour deliveries. This induces optimism with respect to their potential introduction as well as skepticism about the lack of attention local decision makers have, so far, paid to this policy option.

The distribution of goods in urban areas, together with private traffic flows, are among the main sources of energy consumption, air pollution and noise. As a consequence, in the 2000s, several EU cities started to implement logistical solutions for the sustainable city. In this context, this study addresses the implementation of a new eco-logistic system, which serves multiple adjacent cities by using electric vehicles to deliver goods of any type within their urban areas. This paper describes the results of a project developed in the province of Vicenza (northern Italy) and covering the main cities (Bassano del Grappa, Thiene, Schio and Valdagno) in the foothills (the so-called Pedemontana Veneta zone). The eco-logistic system aims to cover the last 50 miles of distribution (typical area of an Italian province) with a centralised platform that performs green deliveries with electric vehicles from/to the downtown areas. A preliminary and extensive “on field” analysis by means of door-to-door questionnaires was conducted to identify the performance required by the eco-logistic system. Therefore, the design of such a distribution system is performed to assess and define the conditions that make this solution profitable from both the economic and the environmental perspective.

The aim of this paper is to seek an answer to an specific question: how to make city logistics sustainable? This question in principle has no specific answer. By contrast, it could be answered in many and varied ways. Behind the search for some of these answers lies the development of a roadmap which this work aims to present. The research lines, the theoretical framework and methodology of the roadmap will be explained. Although the current status of the roadmap, its duration and timing still need to be completed, the main facts, as well as the results obtained to date and the expected results are here presented.

Urban areas are vital centers of economic activity and innovation generating large economies of density and proximity. Yet, procuring and distributing goods in an urban context is fraught with difficulties because of infrastructure congestion, external costs, conflicting objectives among stakeholders, and asymmetric information. In order to improve the performance of the urban goods transport system many policies have been proposed, including goods vehicle time windows, vehicle-type restrictions, loading\unloading policies, fiscal policies, and the promotion urban transhipment and consolidation centres. Unfortunately, not much is known concerning how these policies affect the existing distribution practices. It is quite likely that the impact is differentiated by type of product and distribution channel. The aim of this paper is to explore this issue. Drawing on the existing literature and on the empirical evidence from some Italian cities, the paper identifies and discusses the relationship between each of the above-mentioned policies and the distribution channels of some goods (fresh food sold in retail stores, food distributed by Hotels, Restaurants and Catering (Ho.Re.Ca.), pharmaceutical products and clothing&footwear) which are commonly distributed in Italian urban centers. It is found that the distribution of pharmaceutical products is unaffected by these policies, whereas the distribution of fresh food is negatively affected especially by access time regulation and loading\unloading policies. The Ho.Re.Ca. and the clothing&footwear channels are likely to be impacted the most by fiscal policies and by the promotion of urban transhipment and consolidation centres.

The paper analyses the potential for introducing a Park&Buy service in the city of Pesaro (Italy) along the lines of the pilot project introduced in Siena, Italy, in 2004. It attempts to empirically evaluate the preferences of the parties involved and derives some suggestions on the potential compromise solution via a specifically designed stated preference experiment, drawing from the literature on interactive agency discrete choice modelling. Although various theoretical and methodological issues are still open for discussion, the methodology proves useful in giving insights not only on the parties’ preference structure - as normally achieved by discrete choice models - but also on shopkeepers perception of customers’ preferences, on the room for bargaining, on each party’s influence on choice attributes and on the determinants of the probability of achieving a comprise solution.

This paper reports the results of a stated-preference study aimed at investigating how transport decisions are made by receivers or by transport operators about the potential use of an urban freight consolidation centre in the city of Fano, Italy. Because there are no revealed preference data, a stated-choice methodology is used. The stated-choice experiments present two alternatives—one using a private vehicle subject to various traffic regulations and one using the urban freight consolidation centre with varying cost and efficiency levels. Conventional discrete choice data modelling shows that the potential demand is influenced mainly by the distance of the parking bay from the shop, by access permit cost, by the service cost of the urban freight consolidation centre, and by the delay in delivery time. Simulations are then performed to assess how the potential demand is affected by various incentives and regulations affecting urban goods distribution.

9th International Conference on City Logistics, Tenerife, ESPAGNE, 17-/06/2015 - 19/06/2015; In this article, we present efforts towards building a city-wide freight delivery rounds optimization system aimed at leveraging city traffic information to optimize professional vehicle rounds. This project, called SmartDeliveries, has been developed as part of the OptimodLyon project. We present the system's architecture and general objective. Then we present early evaluations which have led us to identify three main technical challenges to address, but also to quantify the potential productivity gains for its users: 18% in distance savings and 11% in time. This could lead, if the system were to be generalized at the scale of the city, to a reduction in as much as 5% in traffic, and to corresponding savings in emissions, which are the primary motivation of the project leaders. Finally we discuss the remaining challenges to address, from a technical as well as an organizational standpoint, to introduce real life implementation of the system.

Road Freight transport is causing a number of social, environmental and economic negative impacts in many cities around the world. Therefore sustainable city logistics must be the solution to the problems of urban centers, with the main objective of researchers reduce these impacts, without penalizing the needs of cities. Cause of this several sustainable initiatives and policies have been implemented to help reduce them. But are the sustainable policies really sustainable? So this paper aims to evaluate one of these policies in a quantitative way to answer the question. Therefore be presented and implement a model based on VRP logic to evaluate the differences between the distances traveled by vehicles of a logistics company in a city with a policy regulating access and the distance traveled without such regulation. And based on the results obtained attempt draw conclusions to answer the question.Keywords: City logistic, Sustainable policies, Vehicle routing, Access time windows, Genetic Algorithms, City centersLogística Urbana: ¿Son realmente sostenibles las políticas sostenibles?Resumen: La Logística Urbana sostenible debe ser solución ante los numerosos problemas sociales, medioambientales y económicos causados por el transporte de mercancías por carretera en las ciudades. De hecho son varias las iniciativas y políticas sostenibles que se han llevado a cabo para intentar reducir estos problemas. Pero ¿son realmente sostenibles estas políticas sostenibles? Este trabajo tiene como objetivo evaluar una de estas políticas de forma cuantitativa para poder responder a dicha pregunta. Así se evaluaron las diferencias entre las distancias recorridas por los vehículos de una empresa de logística en una ciudad con y sin una política de acceso regulado.Palabras clave: Logística Urbana, políticas sostenibles, enrutamiento de vehículos, ventana de acceso temporal, algoritmos genéticos, centros urbanos.