Financing Urban Logistics Projects - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 252

Table 6 Scenario simulation synthesis

Yearly fee a
(per vehicle) (€)

Scenario Stakeholder Total costs (€) Economic

IRR

Socio-economic
rate

S1 Public 1,853,428.91 n.a. 5.7 % 0

S2 Public 1,853,428.91 4.6 % 90.9 % 250

S3 Private 1,853,428.91 16,2 % n.a. 280

S4 Public 346,974.33 n.a. 5.7 % 0

Private 1,506,454.57 14.3 % n.a. 220

S5 Public 1,112,057.34 4.6 % 62.0 % 260

Private 741,371.56 17.6 % n.a.
a Fees include a Value Added Tax (VAT) of 20%, which is a reallistic value for European
countries (Gonzalez-Feliu et al. 2013 )

the study would be monetized) and the yearly fee that has to be asked to transport
carriers (per vehicle) to reach the expected IRR. Scenario S1 defines the socio-
economic issues and shows the global benefits in case of a total funding by public
authorities. In the current economic context, this scenario is not viable, since at
least a part of the costs (most operational costs and if possible a part of investment
costs) should be refunded by the user. In that context (Scenarios 2 to 5), different
possibilities are shown. The lowest fee is obtained by a system managed and
financed by a private carrier with a public subsidy which cover the investment
costs, representing about 18 % of the total costs of the system in a 10 years
operational configuration (S4). Then, a system totally financed by public funds but
with a user's refunding strategy (S2) results on a similar but lightly higher fee
(220€ for S4 and 250 for S2). An only privately financed system (S3) needs a fee
of 280€, almost 30 % more expensive that the best case. However, in S4, public
authorities need to finance almost 350,000€ without any economic return of
investment, whereas in S2 and S5 the invested capital can be refunded. The
difference is that in S2, the total amount (more than 1.8 million €) needs to be
invested, and in S5, the amount to invest is about 60 % of the total (about
1.1 million €). Moreover, having a private partner guarantees a constant need of
ensuring the system's efficiency and reaching in the best way the expected IRR.

5 Which Urban Logistics Fields Seem the Most Adapted
to Public-Private Partnerships?

From the example, we observe that PPPs can be a valid alternative to classical
funding strategies. Moreover, other forms of public-private collaboration seem
interesting for different types of urban logistics solutions, whereas for commercial
applications or private actions they are few recommended. Furthermore, also in the
case of public utility cases (mainly related to infrastructural or policy actions) the
collective utility thinking dominates the other strategies. In this section we present