Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
1 Introduction
The freight transport sector is a major source of employment and often plays an
important role in the economic development of regions and the country. However,
freight transport is also a disturbance-generating activity, due to congestion and
environmental pollution, particularly in urban areas (Crainic
2008
). In urban
contexts, city logistics have been developed for more than fifteen years, providing
solutions and methods to support public authorities as well as other stakeholders in
urban freight transport planning and management (Taniguchi et al.
2001
). One of
the most popular solutions related to city logistics is that of urban consolidation
centres (UCC). Because they are located near city centres, UCCs usually have
significant costs related to real estate expenditure. Similarly, urban distribution
systems based on consolidation also require extra support to ensure their economic
continuity (Ville et al.
2012
). For these reasons, UCCs in Europe are currently
represented by only a few operationally cost-effective cases, most of them in
Southern Europe (France and Italy).
Another solution is that of logistics pooling, analogous to car-pooling with the
common use of logistics resources, whether material (vehicles, platforms), human
(drivers, land operators) or conceptual (software tools, information). We have
observed several projects dealing with urban logistics resource sharing in the last
years, and most of them are still in the developmental phase (Gonzalez-Feliu and
Morana
2011
). Most of these projects aim at forming a semi-closed group of
collaborators who share vehicles and platforms to reduce their logistics costs and
the environmental hazards related to last-mile distribution in dense urban zones.
Although several urban logistics pooling projects have been started in Europe, they
remain at the conceptual level, and no experimentation or evaluation has yet been
performed. The evaluation of a logistics system is important since the performance
of the system will be assessed ''ex ante'' and will motivate public authorities to
implement a pilot phase or deployment of these systems.
This chapter proposes a global study of urban logistics pooling, illustrating the
different stages of planning, assessment and evaluation. First we present the main
concepts of logistics sharing, focusing on urban freight consolidation, followed by
a conceptual model for urban logistics sharing. Finally, the organizational model is
validated via a case study.
2 Urban Consolidation and Logistics Pooling
Traditionally, urban freight transportation planning is carried out by the operating
companies. In recent years, public authorities have started to get involved in the
development of solutions to deal with the major problems of freight transportation
in city centres: congestion, air pollution, noise and other environmental nuisances.
Some of the most common measures taken by the authorities in different countries
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