Final Report Summary - STRAIGHTSOL (STRAtegies and measures for smarter urban freIGHT SOLutions)
Executive Summary:
Urban areas represent particular challenges for national and international freight transport, both in terms of logistical performance and environmental impacts. To support the creation of a new concept of Smart Urban Freight Systems, the STRAIGHTSOL project, Strategies and measures for smarter urban freight solutions, was launched to (1) develop a new impact assessment framework for measures applied to urban-interurban freight transport interfaces; (2) support a set of innovative field demonstrations, effectively showcasing improved urban-interurban freight operations in Europe; and (3) applying the impact assessment framework to the live demonstrations and developing specific recommendations for future freight policies and measures.
The seven STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations were:
• urban consolidation centre in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona, ES) by DHL;
• city logistics mobile depot in Brussels (BE) by TNT Express;
• remote ‘bring-site’ monitoring near London (UK) by Oxfam;
• rail tracking and warehouse management in Thessaloniki (GR) by Kuehne+Nagel;
• retail supply management and last mile distribution in Oslo (NO) by GS1 Norway;
• loading/unloading operations management and regulations in Lisbon (PT) by EMEL;
• night-time deliveries in Brussels (BE) by Colruyt and Delhaize.
Generally, through the STRAIGHTSOL demonstration analyses, it was shown that most of the tested concepts have very positive impact for the society as a whole, leading to a positive impact both for the citizens and the local authorities. We have seen that local authorities tend to focus on the criteria that they have in common with the citizens, considering their other criteria as less important. As a consequence, citizens and local authorities usually assess the different scenarios in the same way.
These measures, however, tend to come at a price for the private partner that operates the demonstration and usually bears most of the costs. In none of the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations new prices were negotiated between the various private stakeholders meaning that economic costs or benefits were not shared between them. They were also not compensated for the external benefits that were created (reduction or emissions, better road safety, improved urban accessibility). The evaluation confirmed that it is very difficult to implement sustainable city logistics concepts, because they appear to be financially unviable for the private stakeholder undertaking the initiative. And even if there are scaled variations that are financially viable, the solution requires adapted behaviour of the main stakeholder which also is a major barrier for roll-out. In the evaluation we have identified the trend that the scenarios that are supported by the citizens and the authorities are usually not supported by the operator, receivers and senders and vice versa.
Overall, the evaluations show that there is a big role to play by the (local) governments. All concepts are beneficial to society, especially when they are scaled. They require, however, too much initial investment of a private partner or cannot be operated in a profitable way. In that sense, the local government can play a crucial role in the take-up of these concepts when they use their regulation power to support sustainable concepts.
Project Context and Objectives:
Background
An environmentally and financially sustainable urban freight transport system is a prerequisite for liveable cities. However, goods, waste and service trips in urban areas do impose negative traffic and environmental impacts and take place in space shared with many other actors including public transport operators, private car users, taxis, cyclists and pedestrians. Europe’s urban population is expected to increase from 74% today to 84% by 2050 (United Nations, 2010), adding further challenges for urban freight. The development of new consumers’ demands and retail formats (including e-commerce) makes urban freight operations even more challenging.
The European Commission (2013) defines urban logistics as “the movement of goods, equipment and waste into, out from, within or through an urban area”. Urban freight and urban logistics have been given increasing attention over the last decade, and many cities and companies across Europe have undertaken various trials of regulatory, technological, infrastructural and logistical measures with the intention of making urban freight transport more efficient. Despite many promising initiatives, there have also been several failures, which often arise when public subsidies are progressively phased out.
In the 2011 white paper on transport (European Commission, 2011), one goal was to “achieve essentially CO2-free city logistics in major urban centres by 2030”, while the green paper ‘Towards a new culture for urban mobility’ (European Commission, 2007), highlighted the importance of the urban dimension of freight transport, and the need for efficient interfaces between long and short-distance freight transport. Possible solutions proposed include the use of smaller, more efficient and cleaner vehicles, improved load planning, consolidated distribution, zones with access regulations, and institutional reforms with increased integration of multiple stakeholders in local policy-making. In the Action Plan on Urban Mobility (Commission of The European Communities, 2009 (COM(2009)490 final)) the Commission explains that it intends to provide help on how to optimize urban logistics efficiency, including improving the links between long-distance, inter-urban and urban freight transport, aiming to ensure efficient ‘last mile’ delivery (Action 19). Another focus in the Action Plan is how to better incorporate freight transport in local policies and plans, and how to better manage and monitor transport flows.
There remains however a lack of emphasis on urban logistics in city and transport planning. Of those who expressed an opinion in a 2012 DG MOVE public stakeholder questionnaire, 83% did not agree that “urban transport planning gives sufficient consideration to urban freight logistics”. The European Commission (2013) suggested that this was due to: (1) a lack of focus and strategy on urban logistics, with few cities having an individual in authority responsible for urban logistics; (2) a lack of co-ordination among actors involved in urban logistics, and in many cases insufficient dialogue between city authorities and private actors who operate there; (3) a lack of data and information which makes it difficult to improve operational efficiency and long-term planning.
Browne (2010) highlights the complexity of urban freight transport by the range of stakeholders involved, including senders, receivers, logistic service providers, residents, consumers, government and administrative bodies. Urban freight transport also has the challenges associated with energy use, air quality (environment), increasing road congestion, road safety, disturbance and noise, and access restrictions combined with a general lack of loading and unloading space. There is a clear need for more committed initiatives with strong involvement from cities and regions.
Many cities and companies across Europe have undertaken various trials of regulatory, technological and logistical measures to try and make urban deliveries more efficient and effective. But, one major barrier to the wider take-up of some of these measures is a general lack of evaluation and systematic assessment of the effects of different measures, which lead to the promotion and implementation of unsuitable solutions to the local context. If evaluation has taken place, it is not based on a harmonised and systematic approach. It was therefore a need for a more systematic approach to impact assessment and evaluation of urban freight transport measures.
STRAIGHTSOL objectives
STRAIGHTSOL is one of several projects co-financed by the European Commission that study urban-interurban interfaces and last mile distribution, promoting increased effectiveness and sustainability of urban logistics. As recognised by the various stakeholders and as described by the European Commission in the call text of topic GC.SST.2011.7-4 Urban-interurban shipments, there was a clear need to create a comprehensive approach to urban freight solutions linking urban logistics to their inter-urban interfaces.
The main objectives of STRAIGHTSOL were to:
1) Develop a new impact assessment framework for measures applied to urban-interurban freight transport interfaces. The analytical framework will be generic in the sense that it could be applied to any measure within the urban-interurban context and across cities and regions in Europe.
2) Support a set of innovative field demonstrations showcasing improved urban-interurban freight operations in Europe.
3) Apply the impact assessment framework to the live demonstrations and develop specific recommendations for future freight policies and measures.
The baseline for STRAIGHTSOL was current operations of the demonstrations involved as well as current methodology applied in analyses of the urban freight transport context and urban-interurban freight transfer. The project wanted to achieve smarter solutions for the demonstrators involved, demonstrate the usefulness of the new impact assessment framework, and providing useful inputs for the future development of strategies and measures for smarter urban freight solutions and urban-interurban freight transfer.
Organisation of project
The project consisted of eight work packages (WPs):
WP1 – Administrative Management: all matters relating to the financial and legal management, reporting and administration of the project.
WP2 – Review: a targeted state-of-the-art review on past, existing and emerging measures and initiatives relevant to the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations taking place in WP4. The results were utilised in the design of the impact assessment framework in WP3 and the implementation of demonstrations in WP4.
WP3 – Evaluation Framework: development of an impact assessment framework for urban– interurban freight transport interfaces able to capture the complexity of the urban-interurban environment establishing a thorough procedure of analysis for transparent decision making recommendations. The framework includes multiple methodologies, and is applicable to any measure within the urban-interurban context and across regions in Europe.
WP4 – Demonstrations were designed to test and validate a broad set of measures and initiatives that are expected to constitute parts of future sustainable smart urban freight transport systems. Seven demonstrations took place in the project.
WP5 – Impact Assessment: evaluation of all the demonstrations using the framework established in WP3, including development of a roadmap for compliant urban-interurban transport systems and logistics based on lessons learnt and possible generalisations.
WP6 – Recommendations: development of a set of tailored recommendations to improve logistics operations in urban-interurban contexts. The recommendations were based on a synthesis of the results obtained in the previous work packages. This work package thus established a bridge between STRAIGHTSOL results and real world operations.
WP7 – Dissemination and exploitation activities, including measures for maximising the uptake of the STRAIGHTSOL outputs through engagement with stakeholders and ensure that last-mile freight management policy is influenced by the findings.
WP8 – Scientific management of the project; ensured efficient and effective coordination of the project; developed risk management and quality assurance procedures; ensred continuous scientific control of work and results and consistency in the achievements of and workflow between different work packages to support overall project goals.
The structure of the STRAIGHTSOL project and the linkages between the scientific work packages (WP 2 – WP 6) are presented in Figure 1.
The consortium composition was designed to fulfil the research needs that the urban-interurban interfaces represent. The consortium consisted of eight scientific partners and nine demonstrations partners, of which one was a local government. The demonstration partners were bringing actual experiences and actual state-of-the-art into the consortium. Together the chosen demonstrations covered a range of promising measures for promoting future sustainable and smart urban freight systems. The diversified scopes of the demonstrations enabled us to cover a multitude of challenges in urban freight and the urban-interurban shipments context. Together the scientific partners and the demonstrator partners represented a group able to study a multitude of facets of the future smart urban freight transport concepts.
Project Results:
The discussions of scientific and technical results is organised in four parts. We first describe the evaluation framework and then the individual demonstrations; these refer to the first two objectives of STRAIGHTSOL. The last two parts relate to the third STRAIGHTSOL objective, and cover main evaluation conclusions, and recommendations and challenges ahead, respectively.
I. Evaluation framework
Within STRAIGHTSOL a new assessment framework was developed for the evaluation of measures applied to urban-interurban transport interfaces. This evaluation framework has been developed to allow a thorough evaluation of the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations. The framework is however general and can be used for any measures in last mile distribution or urban-interurban freight transport interfaces.
Any actor who is confronted with a problematic urban delivery situation and thinks of several solutions to deal with it can turn to the STRAIGHTSOL framework for structural and comprehensive support in deciding on which solution to choose. The framework can be applied in different stages of this decision making process, before or after measures are tested or implemented.
In the past, many innovative city distribution concepts have failed because not all stakeholders were taken into account (Macharis and Melo, 2010). That is why, within STRAIGHTSOL, these actors and their objectives are considered as the primary focus of the evaluation framework. Important concepts in the evaluation framework are (i) the identification of alternatives, (ii) the identification of stakeholders, (iii) their objectives/criteria and the importance they attach to these objectives (weights), and (iv) the indicators that operationalise the criteria.
Alternatives
The alternatives can be: (i) the current way of working, (ii) the new way of working, (iii) possible other ways of working and (iv) future scenarios.
Stakeholders
Five key stakeholder groups for urban freight transport were identified:
• Shippers: Give order to send the goods
• Logistic Service Providers: Assure and support the transportation service
• Receivers: Receive the goods
• Citizens: Live and consume in the city
• Local Authorities: Regulation and infrastructure provider
Criteria
The stakeholders involved in a given situation usually work towards different goals, sometimes even conflicting ones. In order to properly evaluate a particular solution, initiative or measure, we have to know and understand the criteria by which each stakeholder group judges it. The main aims and objectives (criteria) of the five stakeholder groups were identified through a literature review and a thorough analysis of the input of the stakeholders of the seven STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations. Table 1 shows the identified criteria for each of the five main stakeholder groups.
For each STRAIGHTSOL demonstration it was analysed to which of these criteria the stakeholders give priority by means of an internet survey based on pairwise comparisons. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to determine the weights of the criteria of the various stakeholder groups. It uses hierarchical structures to objectify a decision problem. In order to determine the weights for the evaluation of the demonstrations, surveys were spread among the stakeholders of the different demonstrations. The number of respondents varied from demonstration to demonstration and from stakeholder group to stakeholder group. The weights attributed to criteria by the stakeholder groups vary from demonstration to demonstration as well.
Indicators and KPIs
The criteria are translated into indicators. This means that, based on the stakeholders’ perspective, the indicators represent the criteria by which the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations will be evaluated. A distinction of impact areas is commonly used in studies on sustainability. In addition to the impact areas Environment, Economy and Society (known as the three pillars of sustainability), the impact area Transport was added as a fourth. This resulted in a framework that relates the stakeholders, criteria and impact areas to 31 indicators divided across the four impact areas. Five indicators are defined within the impact area Economy. These focus on the economic perspective and market potential of the intended measure. The indicators all include a monetary aspect. Within the impact area Environment, four indicators are defined that reflect local and global emissions and noise levels. The societal impact area includes a set of nine indicators, including the attitude towards environmental impact, the attractiveness of the environment and acceptance levels (for different actors). The impact area transport is divided into indicators that reflect the quality of service (six), indicators for the efficiency of the transport system (three) and safety and security indicators (four). Not all indicators are, however, key for the evaluation of the demonstrations. It is important to limit the core indicators to those factors that are essential for reaching the objectives of the intended measure while being also reliable measurements. A selection phase is conducted to identify key performance indicators (KPIs).
The indicators that are defined to measure the impacts must be used consistently across the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations. This does not imply, however, that all indicators will be relevant for a particular measure. Nor will it prevent demonstrations from having their own additional indicators for evaluation at a more detailed or local level. Therefore, users of the framework:
• should only select those indicators from the framework that are relevant and applicable for the demonstration under evaluation;
• should define additional indicators when this is required for an assessment at a more detailed, specific or local level.
The STRAIGHTSOL framework is shown in Figure 2. It can be used by a private company who thinks of several possibilities to change its delivery operations and needs an objective and comprehensive basis to make a choice. The framework can also help local governments to design and/or fine tune their urban freight policy and to make sure that the policy is in line with the goals they want to reach.
The framework includes three stages that are fed by initial input. Due to the complex interaction between the many actors in the urban transport, the most essential input is a list of stakeholders whose support is significant for the potential success of a solution and their respective objectives to be taken into account. The STRAIGHTSOL project distinguished five relevant stakeholders in the urban and urban-interurban freight transport context. A set of criteria is defined to represent the objectives of each stakeholder group. Secondly, knowledge of existing urban and urban-interurban freight solutions helps to elaborate alternative city distribution concepts.
The first stage ‘Description and assessment’ aims to first identify the context and the current situation and secondly to explore possible alternatives to the current situation. First of all, a good understanding of the current way of working allows defining the window of opportunities that explains why the initiative taking actor wants to find a better alternative way of working. Also to develop attainable alternatives the fixed context in which they might be implemented has to be clear. To describe the context, a set of characteristics was defined in Deliverable 3.1; these are organised according to three topics: geographical area, initiative characteristics and product characteristics. Knowing the fixed regulations which are in force will help to develop successful alternatives. Therefore, the second part of this stage describes the alternative situations using the knowledge of alternative urban and urban-interurban freight concepts, of the stakeholders and their objectives and of the current situation and the context. A first comparison of the current way of working and the various alternatives is finalising this first stage. In order to be able to properly evaluate the different options, STRAIGHTSOL developed a set of indicators which is used to both characterize the current situation and the alternatives. These indicators are categorized according to the impact area to allow a more efficient evaluation process with the distinction of four impact areas: economy, environment, society and transport. A data collection template is provided as well.
The second stage of the framework, Evaluation of alternatives, aims to perform an overall evaluation of the current situation and the various alternatives. The evaluation covers different perspectives, as it 1) looks at benefits and costs to society; 2) assesses the financial viability for the operator; and 3) integrates all stakeholders’ opinions. The evaluation phase is built upon three methodologies:
• the Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA) from the field of welfare theory. It addresses the question: Will the concept give more benefits than costs for society?;
• business modelling from the field of marketing. It assesses whether the concept will work, hereby considering financing and value issues;
• the Multi Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA) from the field of strategic management. It focuses on a comparison of alternative solutions from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives.
The combination of those methodologies assures that all essential aspects for project assessment are included in the evaluation. The evaluation phase enables also benchmarking: by comparing the outcome of different alternatives, the best solution for a given situation can be identified. It is possible to use all methods or only one or two; this depends on the scope of evaluation and the questions addressed. Figure 3 shows the link between the stakeholders and the STRAIGHTSOL framework.
The last stage of the framework named ‘Recommendations and lessons learnt’ aims to give recommendations for large scale implementation throughout Europe. For the project under consideration there will be a policy impact assessment, a prioritization of measures and a roadmap towards industrial roll-out, whereas across projects the transferability to other cities is addressed. The outcome of stage 3 will enable decision makers to mutually compare specific measures or initiatives. It will furthermore describe the steps that are required to move from demonstration to large scale implementation and to reach long-term objectives. This will enable the different actors to plan and coordinate the further deployment of measures and to make the innovation happen.
II. Demonstrations
STRAIGTHSOL supported seven innovative field demonstrations showcasing increased efficiency and sustainability of urban freight transport and improved connections between urban and interurban freight transport. The demonstrations were:
• urban consolidation centre in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona, ES), by DHL;
• city logistics mobile depot in Brussels (BE) by TNT Express;
• remote ‘bring-site’ monitoring near London (UK) by Oxfam;
• rail tracking and warehouse management in Thessaloniki (GR) by Kuehne+Nagel;
• retail supply management and last mile distribution in Oslo (NO) by GS1 Norway;
• loading/unloading operations management and regulations in Lisbon (PT) by EMEL;
• night-time deliveries in Brussels (BE) by Colruyt and Delhaize.
Each of the demonstrations and main evaluation findings are summarised below.
DHL’s Urban Consolidation Centre in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat – Barcelona (Spain)
During the last years, an increasing number of commercial vehicles have been entering the city centre of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, illegal parking operations take place due to oversaturated loading/unloading (L/U) places, and there is a lack of distribution regulations. This results in low vehicle load factor, high operational costs in the last mile distribution, excessive GHG emissions and noise pollution, as well as severe congestion. In general, in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, there is a lack of a clear and uniform regulation to favour efficient urban delivery strategies. However, the city council had an interest in solving the issues at hand. To improve the performance of urban freight deliveries in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, DHL Supply Chain Spain operated an urban consolidation centre (UCC) in order to reduce the number of vehicles entering the defined area (last mile distribution) while maintaining the service levels. The shipment consolidation in the UCC consolidated the delivery load of several carriers to retailers located in a territorial enclave in the city centre. During the evolution of the project, the concept evolved to a Hybrid Consolidation Centre. The distribution to the city centre was combined with other multi-customer supply chains already managed by DHL Supply Chain, but individually. Then volumes were consolidated and an overall optimisation took place. In L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, the big demand attractor was the sum of supply chains where the UCC operated by DHL received the goods and consolidated all. Then, the logistics infrastructure was optimised by the integration of several supply chain sizes.
The demonstration area was the city center of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. It is characterised by a mix of residential and commercial areas, surrounded by a ring of residential areas and a ring of warehouses. The initial plan was to give service to two central neighbourhoods (Centro and Sant Josep), but during the development the service was extended to a third neighbourhood (Santa Eulàlia).
Key stakeholders were:
• Service Provider-UCC Manager (DHL Supply Chain Spain)
• DHL surrounding platforms/supply chains
• Receivers - Stores
• Local administration – L’Hospitalet de Llobregat City Council
• Logistics Service Providers
The demonstration was able to reduce transport costs around 25%, which is really significant. However, the handling costs of the terminal were high and difficult to compensate. In terms of effects to the environment, results prove to be positive in emissions and noise. However, in order to continue the demonstration as a permanent solution from a commercial perspective, some revenues have to be genereated in order to facilitate a feasible business model. From the general overview of costs and benefits for all stakeholders it is clear that the UCC manager assumes all the costs generated, while benefits are shared among LSP, retailers and the city council. It is clear that each of the stakeholders that are benefitted from the measure should absorb at least part of the costs. Each one can do it through a channel that fits the general context. LSP could pay a fee to the UCC manager in order to use the service, which can be compensated with their cost reduction experienced. In the case of the retailers, it is very difficult to convince them to purchase the service, even though there are benefits for them; however, they might be willing to pay if the city council could reimbudse part of the pay though tax reductions. The city council may contribute through different options. Direct or indirect subsidies may be provided.
Regarding the lessons learnt, one of the most critical issues detected is the involvement of the stores. In order to continue the demonstration on a larger scale more stores have to be engaged in the solution or alternatively other potential customers like hospitals, administrations, and universities have to be engaged. Thus, the involvement and the leadership from local administrations will be crucial to attract the attention of all the involved stakeholders.
The second barrier relates to municipalities/public sector readiness to buy this solution in the short term. Currently, launching public and private partnerships to enable business through consolidation centres does not seem to be given priority. On the other side, agreements among different private companies such as retailers and logistics parties represent a more realistic option for building feasible distribution models. In this line, there are some European and National cooperation projects working at designing IT systems which can give a proper synergy for all the actors, but this is still a goal to achieve.
Mobile Depot – TNT Express
As most large European cities, Brussels is a congested city in terms of traffic jams. Drivers in Brussels face average delays of over 33% during peak hours. This does not only affect individuals driving their cars; it also hampers urban deliveries as these are usually carried out by van or by small truck. The combination of diesel vehicles and a congested urban area makes urban deliveries environmentally unfriendly. Furthermore, these delivery vehicles also contribute to the traffic jams. There is also room for improvement from the viewpoint of the operator: having to deal with busy traffic and congestion makes it expensive to keep the inner-city deliveries and pick-ups reliable and fast and makes it difficult to be considerate of the environment. This is also the case for TNT Express. As a global express parcel service provider, many of the company’s operations take place in urban settings. That is why they are open to testing innovative solutions which are cost-efficient, less hindered by congestion and emission free. They developed a new concept: the Mobile Depot (MD). It is a trailer fitted with a loading dock and warehousing facilities that can be used to take the inner-city deliveries from a depot outside the city to a central parking location. From there, the final deliveries are carried out by dispatch riders on electrically driven tricycles and by small electric cars.
The MD was used by TNT Express for a period of three months (28 May 2013 – 22 August 2013) to do their pick-ups and deliveries in a part of the city-centre of Brussels. It concerns postal code areas 1030, 1040 and 1210, which are related to the municipalities Schaarbeek, Etterbeek and Sint-Joost-ten-Node. It is an area of just over 12 square kilometres which is densely populated and highly urbanized. There is no commercial dominance in the area. The area was chosen by TNT Express because of its relatively high drop density of small shipments. The MD arrived at the Parc du Cinquantenaire around 9.15 am. From there, the deliveries and pick-ups were, depending on the volume of that day, carried out by four dispatch riders on electrically driven cyclocargos. During the twelve weeks the MD was tested, 1.292 pick-ups and 5.286 deliveries were done and 4.534 cyclocargo kilometres and 2.544 truck kilometres were driven.
Regular TNT Express deliveries and pick-ups in Brussels are carried out from the TNT depot at the Brussels freight airport Brucargo. Two types of vehicles are used for that. Diesel trucks to do the pallet deliveries and pick-ups and diesel vans for parcels and documents. The parcels and documents destined for a particular part of the Brussels-Capital Region are loaded onto the vans each morning. Around 9 am, the vans start their milk round doing both pick-ups and deliveries. Around 6 pm, they return to the depot from where the new parcels and documents leave for their final destination. Because the cyclocargos that were used in combination with the MD cannot transport big volumes, the pallet deliveries were not further taken into account. For the duration of the demonstrations, TNT Express carried out the last-mile deliveries and first-mile pick-ups in the centre of Brussels from an MD. Each morning, the trailer was loaded at the TNT hub with all deliveries destined for the demonstration area for that day and then driven to a predefined central location in the Parc du Cinquantenaire.
TNT Express was the initiator and owner of this STRAIGHTSOL demonstration. They are a global express parcel service provider commissioned by their clients to transport parcels and documents from their pick-up point to their final destination. Their aim is to provide as much service as possible for the lowest cost possible. TNT Express developed the MD because they believed the solution could both be cost-efficient as well as environmentally friendlier than their normal way of working. TNT Express subcontracts (parts of) the actual transport to local subcontractors. These transport companies are important stakeholders. It is their aim to provide as much service as possible to TNT for the lowest cost possible. During the demonstration, the most important transport company to take into account was the subcontractor carrying out the cyclocargo deliveries. The parking location of the MD in the city-centre was chosen close to the depot of the cyclocargo courier.
The third stakeholder group are the receivers of the TNT Express shipments. They are the final addressees of the shipments and the clients of the fourth stakeholder group, the shippers. Both stakeholders want to keep receiving the same service (at the same price), even if the practical operations are changed. The MD was designed in a way that TNT Express could perform the deliveries in the best possible way.
With the Mobile Depot solution, TNT Express aims to decrease its carbon footprint and to contribute to more sustainable city logistics. This aim fits the objectives of the fifth and sixth stakeholder group very well: the local authorities and the citizens. The local authorities aim to provide a sound living environment as well as a good business climate. No additional measures from the local authorities are needed to implement this measure. However, during the demonstration, the local administration provided a suitable parking location where the MD could be parked during the day and where the loading and unloading operations could take place. The local administration had to issue a local parking ban for the duration of the demonstration. The citizens are the people living, working and spending their free time in Brussels. They want to be able to live their lives as they want in a safe and healthy environment.
The scale of the demonstration was too small to be able to measure an impact on the air quality in the demonstration area. That is why the impact on the emission of pollutants was calculated based on the number of kilometres driven by a specific type of vehicle using the STREAM emission factors (Den Boer et al., 2011).
Business As Usual Mobile Depot Impact MD
CO2 (g/vkm) 340 258,5 -24%
SO2 (mg/vkm) 2,6 1,97 -24%
NOx (g/vkm) 1,25 1,5 +48%
PM2,5 (mg/vkm) 145 59,73 -59%
PM10 (mg/vkm) 30,5 23,77 -22%
Delivering through the MD has an impact on the punctuality of the deliveries and pick-ups. In the before situation, 95.27% of the shipments was delivered on time whilst during the demonstration only 87.56% was delivered on time (wrong addresses, companies that are closed or people that are not at home are not taken into account here). According to TNT Express, the lower punctuality can partly be attributed to the fact that this was a demonstration project and both TNT Express and its subcontractor had to adjust their operations.
The analysis of the demonstration reults showed that more shipments were delivered and picked up before the lunch hour when deliveries were performed with diesel vans. This can be explained by the MD trip between the airport and the parking location and by the additional handling needed to load the cyclocargos.
In the short run, using an MD will not influence the operating revenues as senders cannot choose whether or not their shipment will be delivered through the MD. During the demonstration, doing the deliveries and pick-ups through the MD was twice as expensive compared to the initial situation with vans. In the evaluation we also considered upscaled versions of the demonstrated solutions. The cost-benefit analysis showed that when the mobile depot is used at 90% capacity, the total monthly costs are about 69% higher than in the baseline scenario. The demonstrated concept is more expensive than the business as usual, which follows from the fact that the cost per stop of the zero emission (ZE) sub-contractor is 9% higher than in the initial situation. On top of that are the costs to purchase, move and operate the mobile depot. In order to be competitive with the van delivery, the difference in cost per stop should be in favour of ZE delivery. In addition, the mobile depot related costs for TNT should be reduced where possible.
The MAMCA clearly revealed that the scenarios that are supported by the citizens and the authorities are not supported by the operator, receivers and senders and vice versa. This dilemma is caused by the fact that the concept is societally very relevant but in its current form not financially viable.
Remote 'bring-site' monitoring for more reactive and sustainable logistics – Oxfam
The demonstration concept was to install remote monitoring sensors in Oxfam donation banks to provide up-to-date information about bank fill levels, with a view to scheduling collection vehicles more efficiently. This was motivated by perceived inefficiencies associated with either visiting banks too early (when not containing much) or too late (overflowing banks). Oxfam’s main aims were to reduce their collection costs by reducing vehicle mileage and time spent making collections. In doing so, there would be societal benefit through the associated reduced vehicle emissions, contribution to traffic congestion etc.
Infra-red sensors designed for this type of application were purchased from a third party equipment provider, Smartbin.com©, who also hosted the web interface to the sensor data. A data reporting level of two reports per day was provided, although only daily reporting was actually required. Daily vehicle schedules were devised with the aid of a bespoke algorithm developed and run by the University of Southampton. The algorithm’s suggested routes were checked for suitability by Oxfam’s transport manager and modified as desired before being implemented the next working day.
In the initial design and trial implementation, all donation banks in the demonstration area were equipped with sensors; however, due to technical problems, by the time of the live demonstration only 53% (40/75) of banks were monitored. Historical bank data were used to estimate bank fill levels in the absence of any remote monitoring data.
The demo was based at Oxfam’s Southern Logistics Centre, Milton Keynes, UK (around 90km north-west of London). A vehicle fleet of up to 5 lorries (carrying capacity: 6T) and one van (carrying capacity 1.4T) was available to be used each day, with four or five vehicles typically being required on any given day. The live demo ran during the period 9 May to 19 July, 2013.
The scope of the demonstration area was considered to be appropriate as:
• The number of vehicles gave opportunities for moving collections between vehicles as required
• The geographical extent and duration gave robust and meaningful results
• The vehicle scheduling and routing task was manageable
The only key stakeholder was Oxfam, both as logistics service provider (i.e. in-house collections) and receiver of the donated goods. Secondary stakeholders were the site owners (typically supermarkets who provided space in car parks to house the donation banks) and members of the public donating goods; however, as the demonstration was not expected to have any noticeable effect on them, they did not have any influence on the demonstration design.
A scaled cost-benefit analysis was performed (reported in Deliverable 5.3) based on an implementation five times the size of the demonstration (e.g. in five collection areas of a similar size). The same network coverage (53% of equipped banks) was assumed for consistency. It was found that the time and distance savings seen in the demonstration (~3%) did not offset the additional time required for managing the more complex transport operations (~2 hours/day extra), therefore the demonstration concept was not cost-effective for Oxfam and they have discontinued the use of remote monitoring sensors. The main reason for the relatively small transport benefit was Oxfam’s constraint of having fixed collection days for shops. These collections tended to dominate the round structures and severely limited the opportunities for dynamic scheduling. Without such constraints, transport benefits of up to 25% were estimated. This means that the remote monitoring concept remains a valid proposition but only in applications where round structures are free from too many restrictions. A modified version of the scaled cost-benefit analysis was performed based on a transport of benefit of 15% rather than the 3% obtained in the demonstration, which gives an estimated payback time of around 15 months.
Key lessons learnt were:
• Need for more flexibility in shop servicing - Shop servicing requirements are the main influencers of the vehicle rounds, giving limited scope for dynamic bank scheduling to reduce transport costs. As such, it may be better to visit shops in a more dynamic way, as well as, or instead of, dynamic bank visits to obtain greater benefits.
• Need for more automated management systems - Concern had been expressed by Oxfam of data overload for Oxfam’s transport and retail teams; systems should be developed to provide managers with the summary information they need.
• Sensor technology – Smartbin learned valuable lessons about their sensors as a result of the technical problems that were encountered during the demonstration. This resulted in improvements being made to their products.
Kuehne+Nagel - Rail tracking and warehouse management
Kuehne+Nagel S.A. (K+N) in Greece is an international logistics service provider, responsible for the supply chain management from Central Europe to the Balkan countries. Within STRAIGHTSOL project’s demonstration the focus was set on the cargo transfer from Sopron, Hungary to Thessaloniki, Greece, where the consolidation and the last mile delivery of goods takes place. The analyzed freight route comprises two discrete, but successive transportation legs: the interurban part from Sopron to Thessaloniki implemented by train (rail wagons in block trains) and the urban one performed by road (conventional engine trucks and vans) incorporating the last mile distribution.
Information on cargo location was previously provided manually, after on-site recording of cargo status by the local rail operator's personnel. Information capturing and sharing using conventional means led to lack of or erroneous information, directly affecting waiting times of trucks and the planning of the next legs (e.g. last mile distribution). This also had an adverse impact on terminal activities (warehouse management, cargo handling etc.). Gaps in the interconnection of the two successive transportation legs resulted in the creation of a huge administrative burden, with excess costs degrading the company's image as a logistics service provider. According to K+N’s statistics, previously 26.89% of wagons were delayed for more than one day for various reasons, with 11.5% of these being removed (cut-off) from the block train. The demonstration aimed to ameliorate these problems through the tracking of rail wagons and cargo. Focusing on last mile distribution, there was an urgent need for better organization based on updated and reliable information on the rail cargo location and estimated time of arrival (ETA), towards the elimination of delays that lead to false truck assignments and associated costs. According to initial estimations, many of the costs and losses for K+N could be avoided.
The concept was to optimize the interconnection of the two transportation legs using a GPS-based monitoring system in interurban transport and an information sharing platform open to directly involved stakeholders, linked to the warehouse management system, in order to better coordinate the urban distribution. GPS-enabled devices were mounted onto rail wagons used by K+N for transporting goods and real-time information was provided to K+N on cargo location, assisting in the identification of delays, cut-off wagons, unexpected events, etc. In case of such unexpected incidents, notification alerts were sent to K+N and they, in turn, directly updated their customers or other involved stakeholders on expected time delays of the goods ordered. The action plan is briefed below:
1. Installation of GPS-based monitoring system for the tracking of rail wagons and their cargo during the interurban transportation leg.
2. Interconnection of the new monitoring system to K+N’s intranet to provide real time information on location to K+N, to each stakeholder or partner - Use of E-PoDs in last mile distribution based on live feed from the GPS-based monitoring system.
3. Integration of the GPS-based monitoring system into the existent K+N’s monitoring system architecture, achieving considerable time and cost savings for K+N and other stakeholders.
Based on the customer's demand and interest, during the first period of demonstration tests (5 months), six GPS devices were purchased and enabled the monitoring of 24 wagons per month (3% of the total).
The demonstration took place in the Thessaloniki Greater Area (including city centre and interurban area) and K+N's terminal and warehouse facilities in Sindos industrial zone, some 30km from Thessaloniki city center. The demonstration area was approximately 1,500 km2 including the area where the last-mile operations of K+N and its customers took place. Concerning the collection of data, the demonstration ran from November 2012 until March 2013, but all systems and the general concept are still in full operation.
The stakeholders involved in the demonstration were K+N as logistics service provider, their customers (shippers or shipping companies and receivers of goods), the national rail authorities of each one of the involved countries as infrastructure and equipment provider, the truck operators as partners of K+N implementing the task of last mile distribution and the public, as consumers of the transported goods and also being externally impacted by the concept running.
The results were encouraging and were close to maximum estimates leading to a 4,5% reduction in total truck-kms/month and of respective CO2 emissions/month, as well as to a 9% increase and 4% increase in time and ‘quantity’ punctuality of deliveries - gradual increase of customer satisfaction/stakeholders’ attitude towards environmental impact and demo concept acceptability, as revealed from the stakeholder questionnaire survey that took place during the winter 2012-2013). It is estimated that with the gradual purchase of GPS devices for all rail wagons and after the successful facing of several communication deficiencies in the data transmission, the total cost savings for K+N reach the 1500€/month, while the reduction in truck-kms is estimated to be 1200 kms/month, equating to CO2 emissions savings of around 1kg/month.
The most important lessons learnt were:
• The automation of several processes, such as the vehicle and cargo tracking and tracing, provided the opportunity for better human resource management, relieving the personnel from time consuming modules and tasks, leading to the upgrading of the company’s level of provided services.
• The limited battery life of GPS devices (7-8 days max), often caused power supply problems especially when the duration of the rail trip from Sopron to Thessaloniki lasted for more than 7 days (including delays).
• Differences and gaps in the communication protocol between neighbouring countries during the transmission of data caused low data transmission rate (36% successful runs).
• The GPS devices were not plug ‘n’ play, so for each different case in the future, there will be a need to adjust them according to the respective operational needs and in compliance with the communication protocol and standards of the area of study or application. Technical issues concerning communication standards’ incompatibility, energy autonomy and data transmission rate must be faced in order to acquire an exploitable added value service.
• There was much difficulty in finding capable personnel in Sopron railway station to affix the GPS devices onto rail wagons and setting them on at train departure.
• Uneven level of information provision on cargo location (low in Sopron, not at all in Serbia).
• Regarding GPS system, the high vegetation and special infrastructure (i.e. tunnels) hinder the data transmission on cargo location.
• Prompt and seamless information provision was achieved through the information interface facilitating regular and on-demand update on cargo location to K+N and, in turn, to K+N’s customers (shippers and/or receivers).
• Enhanced information provision assists the mitigation of false assignments and waiting times for truck operators, reducing the respective costs and CO2 emissions.
• Handling the GPS devices (affixation on wagons, recharging and returning of the device to the initial point of rail trip) constitutes a complex procedure, also incorporating significant costs which have to be charged to the customer or be internalised by the logistics service provider or the rail operator. Otherwise, the added value is counterbalanced by the increased costs, which is associated to the possible decrease in the attractiveness of the provided services due to the low ratio of cost over value. In many cases, the price the customer has to pay for the real time monitoring service is disproportionate to the expected benefit or the (small) value of the transported goods, so it is either not worth it or unnecessary. A feasible solution could include charging specific types of cargo (high value, perishable goods, vulnerable cargo, etc.).
Retail Supply Management and Last Mile Distribution in Oslo – GS1 Norway
While receiving goods, many shop owners neither know if their goods will arrive on time nor how many items they will receive at a time. Stock management is often handled at chain levels and not by the individual stores. Some shops engage extra staff when they expect deliveries, while others accept to use extra hours before all arrived items are placed on the shelves or in an appropriate storage area. In either case, it would be very useful for the shopkeepers to get more precise information on their inbound shipments before they arrive. Moreover, the norm is that the driver has to bring the loads into each store that receives items and then receives his proof of delivery. In shopping centres there are often long distances from the freight reception areas to the individual shops. For a truck delivering several pallets to shops in a shopping centre, the driver may need to spend a significant amount of time bringing pallets to the shops, as he can only bring one pallet at a time. During this time the truck occupies space in the freight reception area, which may affect the efficiency of the unloading from other trucks. There is thus a potential for improvement of the freight reception process in shopping centres. The aim of the demonstration was thus to demonstrate smarter solutions for information collection and sharing between stakeholders in the supply chain by use of GS1 standards, and to demonstrate the usefulness of joint buffer storage facilities in shopping centres.
The GS1 Oslo demonstration took place at Stovner senter, which is a shopping centre in Oslo, Norway with approximately 100 shops. The centre receives deliveries from multiple warehouses in the Oslo area. The centre was owned by the Steen & Strøm Corporation of shopping centres, but has been sold to a different owner after the demo took place. Several retail chains and logistics service providers participated in the demonstration.
The demonstration was planned and organised by GS1 Norway, and the demonstration concept was developed in close cooperation with the stakeholders involved. The local shopping centre manager as well as their owner Steen & Strøm were actively involved and contributed with room for buffer storage as well as extended agreement with their security company Securitas who operated the buffer storage. Several logistics service providers, retail chains and retailers participated with their cargo, and the necessary software and hardware for information collection sharing were obtained from technology providers. The municipality of Oslo were consulted and involved in the discussions when the demonstration was planned.
The basic concept of the demonstration was to collect information on shipments destined for shops in a shopping centre in Oslo which receives deliveries from multiple warehouses in the Oslo area. For deliveries to the shops participating in the demonstration, information on shipments was collected at different critical control points through the last-mile delivery and shared with the final receivers of goods by the use of GS1 Event Management standard. A storage room was made available as a buffer storage area, entry to which was handled by a guard from the shopping centre's security company, who could also bring the goods from the buffer storage area to the shops when requested by the shops. The use of this buffer storage area was optional, and facilitated reduced stoppage times for trucks. Event Information was collected at different critical control points through the last-mile delivery like the warehouse/terminal of the retail chain or logistics service.
The most significant positive effects of the demonstration were that stoppage time of trucks could be reduced by up to 15 minutes per pallet, and that shops were offered a better service because they obtained better information on inbound shipments and also could choose when they had their items delivered. The use of Geofencing at chosen points generated event messages to shop managers about expected deliveries. The direct environmental effects were positive, but limited in scale. More significant environmental effects can be obtained with a large-scale implementation where the logistics service providers may re-optimize their distribution due to the savings obtained.
The main challenge for further implementations is that costs and benefits are dispersed on several stakeholders, and that transfer of benefits between stakeholders may be necessary.
Loading/Unloading Operations Management and Regulations in Lisbon - EMEL
The motivation for the EMEL demo was to tackle Lisbon’s growing problems with unregulated loading/unloading activities, which often cause road congestion and even blockage (by trucks stopping on narrow streets for quick loading/unloading activities) and with illegal parking (e.g. trucks and vans parked on sidewalks, double-parked, or parked on places for private cars, and private cars parked on places for freight operations). The Municipal Regulation for On-street Parking (which included the rules for loading and unloading activities) was approved in 2004 (Municipal Regulation no. 85/AM/2004) but never went into force due to lack of a suitable technological solution to support it. It was therefore completely suspended in March 2007 until a feasible technical solution is found. Furthermore there is neither a national legislation to regulate loading/unloading activities nor efficient enforcement to regulate traffic and parking. As a consequence, significant conflicts exist between the urban freight operations, pedestrians, private car users and public transport.
EMEL, Lisbon’s Public Municipal Company for Parking and Mobility, was thus commissioned to find a technological solution to support the revision and entry into force of a new Municipal Regulation. This technology should ensure that parking surveillance becomes more efficient and can be done in real time, and it shouldn’t represent a heavy financial burden to the city.
This is the framework in which the STRAIGHTSOL demo was developed. Its goal was threefold:
• Testing and identifying technologies for controlling and monitoring cargo activities (loading/unloading) in the urban context.
• Providing evidence and the grounds for developing the Municipal Regulation on loading and unloading operations;
• Applying the chosen technology to the rest of the city.
This demonstration tested two different technological schemes to monitor and manage loading/unloading operations. The demo took place in avenue Guerra Junqueiro in Lisbon. This is a 450m long avenue which was chosen due to the great diversity of shops (ranging from small shops to large ones) and of loading and unloading procedures used (by hand, in pallets, in trolleys, etc.). It started on Dec 5th, 2011 and lasted until April 30th, 2012.
On one side of the street the existing parking meters were adapted so that they can issue a special ticket valid for 30 minutes for freight loading/unloading (Adapted Parking Metres or APM). For this, drivers have to expose a contactless card to the APM. The parking officers have then to check whether tickets under the windshield did not exceed the 30 minutes. On the other side of the street some Vehicle Detection Sensors (VDS) were installed on the road surface. These are activated by the presence of a vehicle in the parking place above them and then send a message to EMEL’s control centre. The driver gets 30 minutes to finish the loading or unloading operations and leave the parking space. The VDS are, however, not able to automatically detect whether the parked vehicle is allowed to use the freight operation parking space or is only a private car illegally parked, so this needs to be visually checked by parking officers, who can notify the drivers in case of non-compliances.
There were different types of stakeholders involved in the solution tested whose role, level of participation and interest in the solution differ. EMEL was the main stakeholder as the demo initiator, and it is responsible for the implementation of the technologies and for executing all additional activities. From the outset the following stakeholders have also been affected by the implementation of this demo:
• Transport operators, whose cooperation in the demo is asked for, namely to use adequately the contactless cards; on the other hand, these stakeholders will expectedly have the efficiency in their loading/unloading operations increased by the demo;
• Local Chamber of Commerce, who plays an important role in communicating with and engaging the shop owners and shopkeepers in the demo;
• Shippers and freight receivers (shopkeepers), who will benefit from more reliable deliveries;
• Other road users, who at one hand will be less affected by freight deliveries but on the other hand may face more restricted parking regimes.
This demo had effects on the functioning of the transport system and on the freight operations. Some improvements were expected regarding the punctuality of deliveries, thus leading to an improvement in the customer satisfaction – however this was not possible to measure. A reduction on the illegal (on-street) parking affecting traffic circulation was expected, and the information on illegal parking that was collected showed that there was indeed a reduction of occurrences with the implementation of the demo. Also considered as relevant for this demo were the number of deliveries and pick-ups and the time for loading and unloading activities. Data for these two items was collected but no significant changes have been found. The demo also allowed the identification of the challenges and needs for improvement associated to each one of the technologies being tested. These can be grouped as technical/technological, regulatory, cost/financial, market and business aspects and involvement of stakeholders. Only a small increase in revenues was expected with this demo, and it was not been quantified.
As for the costs, the most relevant ones were:
• investment costs, which are the costs related to installing the technologies (roughly 500€ / parking space for the VDSes with an estimated lifetime of 5 years, and 7500€ for each APM, which also serves as a normal parking meter; a “regular” parking meter would cost 5000€; estimated APM lifetime: 7 years).
• Operating costs, which include communications (between the sensors or parking meters and the control centre), maintenance and management costs; as the system works on solar energy there are no energy related costs.
• Enforcement costs, around 30€/place/month.
Regarding the lessons learnt from the demo, it’s possible to highlight the great importance of properly engaging all the stakeholders from the outset of the project. In this specific demo, the cooperation of the stakeholders was crucial as they had an active role in the process and thus were key partners for making the initiative work. As another side to this, it is also very important to have an effective enforcement scheme that ensures all the non-willing to cooperate comply with the rules.
It is also a noteworthy finding that in a project in which a technological solution is sought it might be interesting to let the market come up with the best solution possible. This can be achieved by making a tender which specifies the main issues to be addressed instead of making a full specification, and thus letting competitive innovation work. However it is important that this specification is complete and well-done so that the solution found is feasible, reliable and fully matches the needs. This is what was done after the EMEL demo was finished.
Night Deliveries in Brussels – Colruyt and Delhaize
Multiple traffic service providers rank Brussels as the most congested European city. Drivers in Brussels face average delays of over 33% during peak traffic hours. These delays do not only affect the everyday commuter, but also the inner-city freight deliverer. Delays might be reduced by shifting deliveries to hours with less congestion. The potential time gains have increased the interest among carriers and the bigger retail chains to shift some of the deliveries to the off-peak hours.
This is also the case for Colruyt and Delhaize, the two biggest Belgian food retailers. In the Brussels-Capital Region they operate 39 big supermarkets. Based on their experiences with off-peak deliveries in other Belgian cities, both retailers are keen to shift some of the daily deliveries to these supermarkets to the night, late evening or early morning. Both believe that deliveries during off-peak hours would be a way to better spread their operations and the goods reception at the shops. They also believe that time and fuel savings would be achieved by avoiding traffic congestion during peak hours. The idea could also be beneficial for society in terms of reduced congestion, increased traffic safety and fewer emissions. Most shops in Brussels which are located in residential areas, however, currently have an environmental permit that does not allow them to load and unload during the night because of the possible noise nuisance produced by manoeuvring diesel trucks and the equipment used during loading and unloading operations. To overcome that, both retailers did several investments for quiet deliveries including silent trailers, silent trucks, covered loading and unloading docks, silent rolling stock and educating drivers to work quietly.
The demonstration took place at five retail shops within the Brussels-Capital Region, three of Delhaize and two of Colruyt. Some of the deliveries that usually take place during the day (8am – 8pm) were shifted to another time of day; be it early mornings (6am – 8am), late evenings (8pm – 10pm) or the night (10pm – 6am). The demonstration took place between January 2014 and April 2014. The five demonstration sites mutually differ in distance to the closest neighbour, covered (un)loading dock or not, restrictive environmental permit or not, relationship with the surrounding neighbours and location in the Brussels-Capital Region.
The environmental permit of retail shops located in the Brussels-Capital Region dictates when deliveries and pick-ups are allowed. For most shops in the Region, deliveries cannot be made during the night. Usually, deliveries should end at 9 or 10pm and cannot start before 6 or 7am. For night deliveries to become a common practice all of these environmental permits would have to be changed or the legislation should be changed. Local authorities, however, are not inclined to do that without a guaranteed night’s rest for the local residents. That is also the reason why they set maximum noise levels that cannot be exceeded.
The demonstration consisted of two parts. During the first phase, at each demonstration site the noise levels during one complete delivery routine using silent trailers, trucks and rolling stock and taking place between 8pm and 10pm were measured. The measurements were in line with the Noise Abatement Law in force. Based on these results, temporary permits were granted to carry out night-time deliveries during the second phase. The night-time deliveries were tested for a period of 2 weeks for each Colruyt shop and for a period of one week for each Delhaize shop.
Colruyt and Delhaize were the initiators and owners of this STRAIGHTSOL demonstration. They are large retailers acting as sender, receiver and transport company at the same time whereby they deliver to their shops from their distribution centres. Their aim is to provide a good customer service in a cost efficient way less hindered by congestion. Night time deliveries could lead to a lower fuel consumption and allow for better capacity utilisation of both the workforce located at the shops and of the road network. Both retailers believe that they can cut costs without causing extra nuisance to local residents while a shift of deliveries can also contribute to a safer and more eco-friendly environment. Colruyt and Delhaize invested in silent equipment to make night deliveries possible. The aim of the retailers is to demonstrate to two important stakeholders – the local authorities and the citizens – that it is possible to perform night-time deliveries without causing additional noise nuisance.
In order to carry out deliveries during the night, early morning or late evening, Colruyt and Delhaize are dependent upon the local authorities of the Brussels-Capital Region. The local authorities want to provide a sound living environment for their citizens. Although it is assumed that performing night deliveries will have a positive impact for the citizens of Brussels in general, local authorities pay special attention to the noise impact of night deliveries on the people living in the vicinity of the shops. They are not inclined to change the environmental permit or legislation without a guaranteed night’s rest for the local residents. Based on the results of noise measurements with silent material, temporary permits were granted to carry out night-time deliveries. The citizens are the people living, working and spending their free time in Brussels. They want to be able to live their lives as they want it in a safe and healthy environment.
In total 99 deliveries were carried out to the two Colruyt shops during the demonstration period using a combination of Euro 6 and CNG vehicles. The goal was to have deliveries evenly spread over 24 hours.
Although Colruyt and Delhaize are two separate retailers, the analysis is based on data from Colruyt. This is because much less Delhaize data were available on time. Assumptions have been verified with expert opinions. The outcome on the (social) business case is expected to be about similar for Delhaize. To be able to compare business as usual with the demonstration, Colruyt collected data on the trips that were shifted as well as on some of the ‘normal’ trips. These data were used to reconstruct two normal weeks for each site and the two demonstration weeks which means that we do not compare day deliveries with night deliveries, but we compare a particular distribution of deliveries throughout the day. The impact on the emission of pollutants was calculated based on the average fuel consumption. Deliveries during off-peak hours have an impact on the average speed of the delivery trucks to and from the shops that participated. During the night, the evening and the morning the average speed is higher than during the day.
There is a big difference in average fuel consumption depending on the time of the day the delivery takes place. The fuel consumption for the evening deliveries seems to be more than twice as high as the fuel consumption for morning deliveries, but there are few observations and may be errors in the estimates. Night deliveries score better than day deliveries. The average speed during the night is not that much higher than during the evening or morning which makes it difficult to understand that the average fuel consumption during the morning is so low and the average consumption during the evening is so high. Because of the use of a CNG truck during the demonstration, the emission of CO2 was higher. When more deliveries are shifted from the day to the night using a Euro 6 diesel truck, the emission of CO2 would decrease (as it is directly linked to the average fuel consumption). This can be explained by the fact that CNG vehicles have not enough power to pull full load trailers which leads to higher CO2 emissions.
The time needed by the driver to load and unload the goods is also impacted by the time of day. The least time is needed when deliveries are done between 6am and 8am (morning) because there is somebody at the shop to help the driver unload and there is not much other work yet for that person. During the night, loading and unloading takes, on average, 16% longer than during the day because there is no one at the shop to help the driver. Night deliveries do not directly influence revenue streams, at least they were not noticeably affected during the demonstration. It can be assumed that when shops are delivered to at night, the chance of empty shelves for customers in the morning reduces, which can have a positive effect on sales revenue over time. In the pilot scenario, the capital expenses increase with 24% due to investments in silent equipment, while the operational expenses decrease with 8%. The total effect is an increase of 3%.
The MAMCA revealed that night deliveries are favoured by Colruyt as well as by the local authorities and the citizens. The bigger the shift of deliveries away from the day, the better the objectives of the three stakeholder groups are served. The main hindrance is, however, the noise nuisance that despite the measures that were taken increases somewhat during the night compared to a situation without night deliveries.
Night-time deliveries, TNT Innight
The demonstration by TNT Innight in Utrecht (NL) had to be cancelled during the project. The goal of the TNT demonstration in Utrecht was to test innovative night-delivery (B2C) concepts that responded to the needs of urban receivers, allowing to shift more vehicle movements from day to night-time. The demonstration’s approach was to test intelligent lockers as secure pick-up and drop-off locations for small parcels, and the plan was that TNT Innight would operate these intelligent lockers during the night. Due to internal TNT issues these plans of having a B2C approach had to be turned into a B2B instead. However, business clients were reluctant because they expected it would raise their costs and/or doubted the reliability and safety of night deliveries. So the new demo was redesigned to test innovative concepts/technologies that would respond to these concerns.
That approach would demand the cooperation of receivers, but usual TNT Express clients are usually the sender of the good. They therefore had to approach companies that outsource the transport from their own depot to their shops or other warehouses to a 3PL - they were able to identify three possible candidates to participate in the demonstration. One of these was a fashion retail chain, which despite believing that night-time deliveries might lead to efficiency gains, did not believe that these gains would decrease costs due to the investments needed for the new technologies (it could be cheaper for the shops participating in the STRAIGHTSOL demo because of the support of the European Commission, but not on the long run).
The other two candidates were outsourcing their logistics activities to another 3PL and also declined to participate – the first because they were afraid that the reliability of the deliveries would not be guaranteed if they changed their 3PL and shifted from day to night deliveries at the same time, and the second because they felt there were security and insurance risks.
TNT Innight also had some remarks regarding this demo. Although they already operated an express night delivery service and believed that night-time deliveries allow them to achieve their goals and objectives, they indicate that night-time deliveries are only cheaper than daytime deliveries if the volumes are big enough and if the delivery network is dense enough. Due to the reluctance of receivers, in some cities or regions this can be an issue. Secondly, TNT Express was not very keen to pass some of its own freight flows onto its TNT Innight division.
Finally, from the side of the local authorities: they do not promote, induce or oblige night-time deliveries because they do not trust the noise impact if the concept is implemented on a large scale.
III. Evaluation of demonstrations
The description of effects and lessons learnt for the individual demonstrations above were based on the evaluation work done for each demonstration. If we look across the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations and investigate the three main evaluation topics, some general conclusions may be drawn.
Socio-economic effects and environment
Although difficult to measure during the demonstrations, positive effects on polluting emissions are expected for almost all demonstrations. Either because trucks are used more efficiently (GS1, DHL, K+N, Oxfam and Colruyt) and/or because they are substituted by less emitting vehicles, such as electric vehicles (DHL - electric vehicles tested only during two weeks of the demonstration; TNT), cargo bikes (TNT) or smaller vehicles (Oxfam). The potential reduction of CO2 and air polluting emissions in the scaled scenarios are greatest for the TNT and DHL solutions, because the scaled scenario of these solutions entail a significant increase in operational efficiency and, in the case of TNT, also a large increase in the geographic reach.
Business models and profitability
Within STRAIGHTSOL, we examined the business challenges for large-scale implementation using business model and business case analysis. We combined quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the business aspects of the demonstrations separately. Next, we generalized results into business concepts that are also useful for other urban-interurban contexts.
The combination of analyses enables drawing conclusions on the financial feasibility of the solutions. The solutions are either: not financially viable (i.e. a successful business model is not likely to be developed), financially viable for the initiator (i.e. a business model can be established without support from outside the own organisation), or desired, but complex to put successfully in the market. In case of the latter, the demonstrated solutions are beneficial for society as a whole. But even though total benefits outweigh total costs, there are various challenges that prevent the solutions from having a successful business model:
1. Costs and benefits are dispersed. Stakeholders that benefit are in many cases not the ones that have the ability/willingness to invest. To solve this, identification and redistribution mechanism for benefit/cost sharing should be developed. This requires additional time, knowledge, resources and costs. Another consequence it that, when benefits are dispersed it is difficult to develop a specific product or service for one customer that is willing to pay for it.
2. Benefits are difficult to quantify. Benefits are often not directly financial, such as, time savings, accessibility, comfort, attractiveness of (public) space, branding, air quality, etc. Stakeholders are often not able to value these benefits and weigh them with the costs (i.e. it is difficult – or even impossible – to put a price tag on these benefits).
3. Reluctance because of non-financial (and non-rational) reasons. In many cases, factors such as trust, competition, dependency and uncertainty, prevent stakeholders from changing their behaviour and hence, can hinder the market uptake of the solutions. Also, current agreements, rules and regulations can be obstacles. In line with this, certain missing regulations, (either supportive like time window exemptions, or restrictive like a congestion charge) could very much support the development of certain business models when they would be imposed.
Finally, it should be noted that the benefits have to be sufficiently high to compensate for risk and transaction costs while changing operations. What we have learned from the business analyses is that the above factors play a key role in whether or not successful business models can be established. These challenges should be identified and overcome first in order to make sure that future efforts are targeted effectively.
Multi-actor multi criteria analysis (MAMCA)
The MAMCA provides a step-by-step approach for a thorough evaluation of city distribution projects. Stakeholders’ preferences are taken into account in the evaluation at each stage of the decision process, thereby increasing the chances of success of any initiative. Not only business-as-usual and the demonstration were assessed, also various possible future scenarios were assessed to identify the parameters that determine whether a concept is appealing to a stakeholder or not.
One general conclusion that can be made is that we see that most tested concepts have a positive impact for the society as a whole, leading to a positive impact both for the citizens and the local authorities. The MAMCA confirms that it is very difficult to implement sustainable city logistics concepts, because they appear to be financially unviable. And even if there are scaled variations that are financially viable, the solution requires adapted behaviour of the main stakeholder which also is a major barrier for roll-out. Overall, the evaluations show that there is a big role to play by the (local) governments. All concepts are beneficial to society, especially when they are scaled. They require, however, too much initial investment of a private partner or cannot be operated in a profitable way. In that sense, the local government can play a crucial role in take-up of these concepts when they use their regulation power to support sustainable concepts.
The private actors focus on viability of investment and operational cost. All demonstrations were more expensive than business as usual, but some of them can be profitable under the right circumstances and with a sufficient scale of the operations. Private actors are not in favour of the demonstrated concepts unless they do not have to help paying the bill. On the other hand, local authorities tend to focus on the criteria that they have in common with the citizens and to consider their other criteria as less important. As a consequence, citizens and local authorities usually assess the different scenarios in the same way.
IV. Recommendations and challenges ahead
The STRAIGHTSOL project has supported demonstration of seven innovative urban freight transport solutions. For each of these we have described critical design choices for others who want to implement similar initiatives. Core questions that have to be addressed are for whom value is created, how the concept can be organised, whether supportive governance is required and expected financial consequences and distribution of these on different stakeholders.
The transferability of the demonstrated solutions to other contexts across the EU was also analysed. Transferability is defined as the ability to transfer and adopt successful measures from one city (donor city) to another (target or receptor city) achieving comparable results in the latter (Macário and Marques, 2008). Analysing the transferability of a measure or a policy requires a dedicated methodology. In the project the methodology that was followed was created based on the 10-step methodology used in the TURBLOG project (TURBLOG, 2011). From these results a roadmap to help decision makers to decide which measures to apply and when to apply them was developed. A city has to work with a broader perspective than what each of the STRAIGHTSOL solutions represents. The roadmap was based on the assumption that a key input for the Urban Mobility System (where the urban freight distribution system is embodied) is the interaction between policies, namely between land-use, environment and socio-economic development of the urban area. It also considered that inputs are not all equally controllable - some are under the control of the transport (or mobility) authorities and thus from their perspective are fully controllable, while others are not. In the implementation cycle of a roadmap, needs and problems should feed the setting of strategic objectives, which is largely dependent on techniques that lead the private agents to practices that will contribute to the desired impacts. Strategic objectives, in turn, should be the feeder of tactical objectives. Finally, operational objectives materialize outputs visible to the citizens, induced by the actions taken at strategic and tactical decision levels.
The evaluation of the solutions has shown that the solutions in general contribute to cities’ goals of reduced emissions, but it is challenging to establish profitable operations for the operator. A key question that follows from the STRAIGTHSOL experiences is thus how (local) authorities should go ahead to promote sustainable urban freight transport solutions in the future.
For several individual STRAIGHTSOL solutions it is possible to see specific public policies that would strengthen the profitability for the private operators. For instance, both the mobile depot solution of TNT Express and the alternative delivery times demonstrated by Colruyt & Delhaize would benefit from congestion charging. A low emission zone would probably also benefit the use of electric tricycles in the TNT case. The consolidation centre demonstrated by DHL Supply Chain in L’Hospitalet de LLobregat could also have benefited from similar policies. In this latter case, it is also apparent that a stronger involvement from local authorities could have improved the viability of the concept, for instance if more deliveries bound for municipal buildings were routed through the consolidation centre.
As pointed out by Mancur Olson (1965), public goods provided through collective actions creates problems with free riders who are not willing to contribute. This could call for design of selective incentives to those who actually contribute. London’s Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) in one such example where companies may qualify for different certification levels and receive benefits corresponding to their level. Policies such as low emission zones or making congestion charges dependent on vehicle emission levels are also measures that promote sustainable operations.
Parts of the motivation of the demonstration of companies like TNT, Colruyt and Delhaize was to prepare for future policies like road pricing. This means that even if the demonstrations immediately have been transferred into permanent operations, the experiences from the demonstrations may be used as a basis for future implementations.
Many cities have developed or are in the process of developing strategic plans for urban freight transport. This reflects an increased awareness and it can be expected that the challenges of the urban transport system will be met by new policies during the next decade. The results of STRAIGHTSOL may serve as motivation for more stringent policies that promote sustainable urban freight transport solutions.
Potential Impact:
The STRAIGHTSOL project was set to promote more sustainable and efficient urban logistics as well as improved interfaces between urban and interurban transport. The evaluation of the demonstrated solutions has shown that uptake and roll/out of these solutions will contribute to reduced negative impacts, in particular local and global emissions. Together the solutions cover significant transport volumes in urban areas, and the potential socio-economic impact of the project is considerable. In order to maximise the exploitation of the project results and the potential impact, the project has put significant efforts into different dissemination activities.
A set of local workshops, one per demonstration, have been used as arenas for discussion of pros and cons of each demonstration, and to capture views of different stakeholders that have participated in or been affected by the demonstrations. The target groups of these workshops have been local stakeholders in each city, but also the general urban freight community.
Project workshops have been used for broader discussions of the demonstration concepts and the outcomes of the demonstrations. The audiences have been composed of representatives from industry, public sector, academics, organisations and utilities. We have in these cases also teamed up with other projects in the urban freight transport domain to widen the interests and the scope.
From the start of the project we have developed videos describing the main concepts of the demonstrations. Towards the end, we have also made two animations, one describing the demonstrations, and one describing the evaluation framework with the aim of making the information as readily accessible as possible also to a wider public. The animations and videos are accessible from the STRAIGHTSOL web site and the STRAIGHTSOL channel on Youtube.
The project has received valuable inputs from the six members of the expert panel European Reference Group, and this group has also served the project by spreading information on STRAIGHTSOL results in their local environments.
The consortium members have been active during external conferences and events, ranging from industrial events to scientific events and events emphasising policy making and public sector participants. Finally, a range of publications and articles have been devoted to disseminating project ideas and results, again ranging from trade journals and industry-oriented magazines to scientific journals and conference proceedings.
In terms of exploitation potential and impact of the STRAIGHTSOL project, four main directions should be highlighted:
I. Take-up of innovative and sustainable urban freight operations
The demonstrations are innovative and represent cutting-edge initiatives for smarter urban freight transport solutions. The companies and municipal agencies that have been involved in the project have taken different steps to build on the experiences from the project and further exploit the demonstrated solutions, and there is also a potential use by companies and municipal agencies outside the STRAIGHTSOL consortium.
DHL Supply Chain have been able to reduce transport costs due to increased consolidation potential identified during the pilot. This positive impact has provided a new scenario for setting and merging some routes near L´Hospitalet de Llobregat and the location of the Urban Consolidation Centre. The City Council are working on the “Municipal Plan for the improvement of the Air Quality”, which is a mandatory document required by Spanish legislation for all cities of more than 200 thousand inhabitants. The wtransnet webpage represents a potential that should be further explored, as this internet site permits sharing of information among logistics operators and fleet managers with a view to improving truck utilisation. DHL’s aim is to identify which suppliers could provide a reliable service within their supply chain outsourced services. Moreover, CENIT and the City Council of Barcelona are developing a transshipment centre with electric tricycles in the framework of the SMILE project from MED Programme. During the planning and implementation, the results and experience of L’Hospitalet were crucial.
For the TNT Express demonstration, the social cost benefit analysis (SCBA) and the multi actor multi-criteria analysis (MAMCA) revealed that the mobile depot (MD) concept can be improved in two directions. First of all, TNT Express can aim to further minimize the cost to operate the MD. A dense distribution network of parcel deliveries is a critical success factor, as well as the contract and cooperation with the subcontractor and the type of goods. Parcels should be easy to handle, as long as they are not too voluminous and not in need of special conditions. The second potential area of improvement is far-reaching support by the local authorities. The concept requires a suitable parking location for the MD right in the city centre where land prices usually are very high. Local authorities can provide support by making such a location available for free. Another supportive measure could be that authorities start internalising externalities. Within the MAMCA, this was simulated by the congestion charge scenarios. Today, TNT Express is looking for a suitable location with the right freight profile and drop density, and where zero emission transport is supported by the local government.
Although remote monitoring of banks has been discontinued by Oxfam due to vandalism and reliability issues, they liked the dynamic aspects of the vehicle routing used and they are currently investigating whether they can service their shops on a dynamic basis, based on their day-to-day collection needs. The University of Southampton will maintain contact with Oxfam key personnel to discuss further exploitation opportunities and contact will also be made with other charity organisations or local authorities using donation banks (e.g. those attending the Oxfam demonstration workshop, such as the Salvation Army). The University of Southampton will also continue to champion the remote monitoring concept through their association with Smartbin and there may also be scope to develop relationships with other sensor providers having a similar interest in the use of remote monitoring technology. Smartbin has expressed interest in exploiting the vehicle routing and scheduling algorithm that was developed by the University of Southampton for the Straightsol demonstration. An Excel spreadsheet version of the algorithm has been made freely available at: http://verolog.deis.unibo.it/vrp-spreadsheet-solver.
The University of Southampton are collaborating with Smartbin, for mutual benefit, by using remote monitoring data supplied by Smartbin for one of their clients (in the USA, waste oil sector) to investigate how the existing collections may be improved through the use of the methods developed in Straightsol.
For the Kuehne+Nagel demonstration, the experienced high costs of returning the GPS devices from Thessaloniki to Sopron is one of the greatest challenges. However, the Hellenic Railways (infrastructure, equipment and rolling stock provider) have already expressed their intention to test and use the demonstration’s GPS-based monitoring concept and incorporate it on condition that any communication and data transmission deficiencies are overcome. On the other hand, K+N have not decided on whether to charge the added value service (offset costs and guarantee viability of investment, but at the same time jeopardising the company’s attractiveness to existing and potential customers in tough economic environment) or not (putting the company ahead of competition at local, regional and national scale), but it is most likely that they will provide it free of charge to special customers, internalizing any involved costs, in order to promote it and attract a greater share of the freight transport market.
Stovner shopping centre was sold from Steen & Strøm to another actor after the GS1 Norway demonstration and the new owners have other plans for the centre, and no further activities will take place there. However, in a planned new shopping centre in Oslo, Steen & Strøm will develop the concept with use of buffer storage. The concept will in addition to delivery services be extended to include reverse logistics, waste management and other value added services. Steen & Strøm is already in contact with providers of buffer storage and single point stock receipt services. In addition to this, Steen & Strøm expressed in the local post-demonstration meeting in May 2014 that they also foresee to incorporate parts of the buffer storage concept in other existing centres. Steen & Strøm is Scandinavia’s leading shopping centre company, and they are also transferring experiences from the Emporia shopping centre in Sweden. Steen & Strøm is owned by the French shopping centre group Klépierre (56.1%) and the Dutch Pension Fund ABP (43.9%). During the mentioned post-demonstration meeting a shipper covering a range of retail chains expressed that they could be able to renegotiate transport agreements with logistics service providers to cover extra costs for buffer storage operations in shopping centres.
The motivation to start the EMEL demonstration was of a very practical nature, and it was already part of the initial plan to deploy the solution to the rest of the city as soon as some essential requirements were met. There are nearly 2000 spaces for loading and unloading activities all over the city, which will expectedly be covered, following the results of the demo. Also based on the results of the demo, the Lisbon Municipality held a public consultation on a new Municipal Regulation for On-Street Parking, which was approved and is now officially into force. This new regulation introduces the requirement for freight operations inside the city to be performed exclusively by registered vehicles. It also introduces new time rules: freight operations are allowed for up to two hours in dedicated loading and unloading bays, the first 30 minutes of which are exempted from payment and the remaining time is charged according to the on-street parking charges. EMEL is responsible for the enforcement of this regulation. Another requirement for spreading the solution is choosing the right technology, which was one of the main goals of the demo. However given the challenges associated with both technologies, EMEL has taken no decision towards the choice of one of them. Instead, it was decided to launch a tender for the development of a new technological solution for managing freight operations. Although it was decided not to use exactly the same technologies as those used on the demo, the specifications for this tender were done based also on the findings of the demo, namely those regarding the issues of verification of the parking space occupancy and the real-time communication with the control centre, and also the issues referred to in the risks and challenges identified above. The results of this first tender were technologically disappointing as no solid solution arose from it. EMEL is now redefining the steps to finding a new and satisfactory solution.
For the Colruyt and Delhaize demonstration, the SCBA and MAMCA analyses revealed that night deliveries have a potential in terms of financial and non-financial benefits, especially when implemented on a large scale. Avoiding congested traffic hours during the day saves energy and time. A more equal distribution of deliveries over 24 hours therefore directly reduces the operational expenses. Capital and human resource investments have to be made to get approval to deliver at night. But over time, these investments are (more than) compensated considering that the solution allows for a more efficient use of vehicles and distribution centre operations. There are also important benefits for society: The energy savings result in fewer emissions of pollutants and better air quality, and the decreased contribution to peak-hour traffic absorbs some of the traffic network congestion. The main prerequisite is, however, a permit/approval from the local authorities. Today, off-hour deliveries are often prohibited based on the noise nuisance they cause and approval is often arranged in terms of case-by-case exemptions. For the retailers it would be easier if permissions were granted based on a set of measures that have to be taken by both the retailer and his carrier, as the industry parties would then know in advance if it would pay off to invest or not.
II. A new evaluation framework for urban freight transport
The STRAIGHTSOL evaluation framework has been designed in a general way to make it applicable for any actor who wants to assess or consider new or alternative urban freight transport measures. The framework may be used by a local authority wanting to improve urban freight transport in its area, a private company considering other ways of working, or by consultants and researchers who want to contribute to a better understanding of the effects of any given measure in the urban freight transport domain. The motivation for developing a new evaluation framework was the general lack of systematic evaluation of measures, which hampers learning and knowledge transfer across cities and companies.
The evaluation framework comes with a training manual, and training courses have already been given to practitioners and other interested parties. An animation has been developed to explain the main concept in an easy way in order to reduce the barriers to exploring the framework.
III. Recommendations and advice for further implementation of sustainable solutions
The evaluation of the seven STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations has contributed to specific advice targeted towards companies interested in exploring solutions from the project (see also I. above) as well as municipalities with an aim to improve efficiency and reduce the negative impacts of urban freight transport. STRAIGHTSOL contributes to transferability and uptake of the demonstrated solutions with advice in terms of critical design factors, elaboration on possible ways to establish feasible business models, and guidance on how local authorities may promote sustainable urban freight transport solutions by supportive policies. The project has also assessed how alternative future conditions may affect the attractiveness of the seven solutions.
IV. Projects and initiatives building further on STRAIGHTSOL
Several national and European projects and initiatives have used experiences from STRAIGHTSOL and built further on results from the STRAIGHTSOL project.
The FP7 project FREVUE benefits from the evaluation framework developed in STRAIGHTSOL. Next, indicators are also used for the (further) development of the freight quality partnership in Rotterdam (i.e. GD010ZES).
The Norwegian research project Green Urban Distribution has benefited from the indicators of the STRAIGHTSOL evaluation framework. Also the project Green and Sustainable (GRASS), funded by the Polish-Norwegian research fund has incorporated experiences from STRAIGHTSOL.
Within the Belgian research project Night Deliveries in the Walloon Region, the STRAIGHTSOL evaluation framework was used to evaluate 5 pilot tests on off-hour deliveries in 5 different Belgian cities. The project was commissioned by the Government of the Walloon Region and resulted in policy recommendations.
Based on the K+N demonstration, the multi-criteria framework that was developed within STRAIGHTSOL contributed in shaping a targeted framework for the evaluation of the use of ICT in the supply chain operations focusing on their impact on the final transport leg. It was also investigated whether the use of diesel or LPG to a truck fleet similar to the one owned by K+N, would have positive impacts on the sustainability of urban operations. The result is that, based on the operational profile of the fleet, diesel trucks reach higher sustainability scores than LPG trucks.
Moreover, further analysis on the market uptake of ICT usage in supply chains was made, following an approach to investigate the stakeholders’ behaviour with and without the technological support of GPS systems and how their urban and interurban logistics operations are impacted.
Finally, a new cooperative scheme is being formulated with the cooperation of K+N and TRAINOSE regarding information exchange about cargo arrival on the railway and collection, distribution and further treatment by road. For this scheme, GPS data will be provided to the road operator, so that to build a seamless intermodal service for customers.
List of Websites:
www.straightsol.eu
Project Coordinator: Jardar Andersen, Institute of Transport Economics, Norway.
Address: Gaustadalléen 21, 0349 Oslo, NORWAY
Phone: +47 99700804
E-mail: jan@toi.no
Urban areas represent particular challenges for national and international freight transport, both in terms of logistical performance and environmental impacts. To support the creation of a new concept of Smart Urban Freight Systems, the STRAIGHTSOL project, Strategies and measures for smarter urban freight solutions, was launched to (1) develop a new impact assessment framework for measures applied to urban-interurban freight transport interfaces; (2) support a set of innovative field demonstrations, effectively showcasing improved urban-interurban freight operations in Europe; and (3) applying the impact assessment framework to the live demonstrations and developing specific recommendations for future freight policies and measures.
The seven STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations were:
• urban consolidation centre in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona, ES) by DHL;
• city logistics mobile depot in Brussels (BE) by TNT Express;
• remote ‘bring-site’ monitoring near London (UK) by Oxfam;
• rail tracking and warehouse management in Thessaloniki (GR) by Kuehne+Nagel;
• retail supply management and last mile distribution in Oslo (NO) by GS1 Norway;
• loading/unloading operations management and regulations in Lisbon (PT) by EMEL;
• night-time deliveries in Brussels (BE) by Colruyt and Delhaize.
Generally, through the STRAIGHTSOL demonstration analyses, it was shown that most of the tested concepts have very positive impact for the society as a whole, leading to a positive impact both for the citizens and the local authorities. We have seen that local authorities tend to focus on the criteria that they have in common with the citizens, considering their other criteria as less important. As a consequence, citizens and local authorities usually assess the different scenarios in the same way.
These measures, however, tend to come at a price for the private partner that operates the demonstration and usually bears most of the costs. In none of the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations new prices were negotiated between the various private stakeholders meaning that economic costs or benefits were not shared between them. They were also not compensated for the external benefits that were created (reduction or emissions, better road safety, improved urban accessibility). The evaluation confirmed that it is very difficult to implement sustainable city logistics concepts, because they appear to be financially unviable for the private stakeholder undertaking the initiative. And even if there are scaled variations that are financially viable, the solution requires adapted behaviour of the main stakeholder which also is a major barrier for roll-out. In the evaluation we have identified the trend that the scenarios that are supported by the citizens and the authorities are usually not supported by the operator, receivers and senders and vice versa.
Overall, the evaluations show that there is a big role to play by the (local) governments. All concepts are beneficial to society, especially when they are scaled. They require, however, too much initial investment of a private partner or cannot be operated in a profitable way. In that sense, the local government can play a crucial role in the take-up of these concepts when they use their regulation power to support sustainable concepts.
Project Context and Objectives:
Background
An environmentally and financially sustainable urban freight transport system is a prerequisite for liveable cities. However, goods, waste and service trips in urban areas do impose negative traffic and environmental impacts and take place in space shared with many other actors including public transport operators, private car users, taxis, cyclists and pedestrians. Europe’s urban population is expected to increase from 74% today to 84% by 2050 (United Nations, 2010), adding further challenges for urban freight. The development of new consumers’ demands and retail formats (including e-commerce) makes urban freight operations even more challenging.
The European Commission (2013) defines urban logistics as “the movement of goods, equipment and waste into, out from, within or through an urban area”. Urban freight and urban logistics have been given increasing attention over the last decade, and many cities and companies across Europe have undertaken various trials of regulatory, technological, infrastructural and logistical measures with the intention of making urban freight transport more efficient. Despite many promising initiatives, there have also been several failures, which often arise when public subsidies are progressively phased out.
In the 2011 white paper on transport (European Commission, 2011), one goal was to “achieve essentially CO2-free city logistics in major urban centres by 2030”, while the green paper ‘Towards a new culture for urban mobility’ (European Commission, 2007), highlighted the importance of the urban dimension of freight transport, and the need for efficient interfaces between long and short-distance freight transport. Possible solutions proposed include the use of smaller, more efficient and cleaner vehicles, improved load planning, consolidated distribution, zones with access regulations, and institutional reforms with increased integration of multiple stakeholders in local policy-making. In the Action Plan on Urban Mobility (Commission of The European Communities, 2009 (COM(2009)490 final)) the Commission explains that it intends to provide help on how to optimize urban logistics efficiency, including improving the links between long-distance, inter-urban and urban freight transport, aiming to ensure efficient ‘last mile’ delivery (Action 19). Another focus in the Action Plan is how to better incorporate freight transport in local policies and plans, and how to better manage and monitor transport flows.
There remains however a lack of emphasis on urban logistics in city and transport planning. Of those who expressed an opinion in a 2012 DG MOVE public stakeholder questionnaire, 83% did not agree that “urban transport planning gives sufficient consideration to urban freight logistics”. The European Commission (2013) suggested that this was due to: (1) a lack of focus and strategy on urban logistics, with few cities having an individual in authority responsible for urban logistics; (2) a lack of co-ordination among actors involved in urban logistics, and in many cases insufficient dialogue between city authorities and private actors who operate there; (3) a lack of data and information which makes it difficult to improve operational efficiency and long-term planning.
Browne (2010) highlights the complexity of urban freight transport by the range of stakeholders involved, including senders, receivers, logistic service providers, residents, consumers, government and administrative bodies. Urban freight transport also has the challenges associated with energy use, air quality (environment), increasing road congestion, road safety, disturbance and noise, and access restrictions combined with a general lack of loading and unloading space. There is a clear need for more committed initiatives with strong involvement from cities and regions.
Many cities and companies across Europe have undertaken various trials of regulatory, technological and logistical measures to try and make urban deliveries more efficient and effective. But, one major barrier to the wider take-up of some of these measures is a general lack of evaluation and systematic assessment of the effects of different measures, which lead to the promotion and implementation of unsuitable solutions to the local context. If evaluation has taken place, it is not based on a harmonised and systematic approach. It was therefore a need for a more systematic approach to impact assessment and evaluation of urban freight transport measures.
STRAIGHTSOL objectives
STRAIGHTSOL is one of several projects co-financed by the European Commission that study urban-interurban interfaces and last mile distribution, promoting increased effectiveness and sustainability of urban logistics. As recognised by the various stakeholders and as described by the European Commission in the call text of topic GC.SST.2011.7-4 Urban-interurban shipments, there was a clear need to create a comprehensive approach to urban freight solutions linking urban logistics to their inter-urban interfaces.
The main objectives of STRAIGHTSOL were to:
1) Develop a new impact assessment framework for measures applied to urban-interurban freight transport interfaces. The analytical framework will be generic in the sense that it could be applied to any measure within the urban-interurban context and across cities and regions in Europe.
2) Support a set of innovative field demonstrations showcasing improved urban-interurban freight operations in Europe.
3) Apply the impact assessment framework to the live demonstrations and develop specific recommendations for future freight policies and measures.
The baseline for STRAIGHTSOL was current operations of the demonstrations involved as well as current methodology applied in analyses of the urban freight transport context and urban-interurban freight transfer. The project wanted to achieve smarter solutions for the demonstrators involved, demonstrate the usefulness of the new impact assessment framework, and providing useful inputs for the future development of strategies and measures for smarter urban freight solutions and urban-interurban freight transfer.
Organisation of project
The project consisted of eight work packages (WPs):
WP1 – Administrative Management: all matters relating to the financial and legal management, reporting and administration of the project.
WP2 – Review: a targeted state-of-the-art review on past, existing and emerging measures and initiatives relevant to the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations taking place in WP4. The results were utilised in the design of the impact assessment framework in WP3 and the implementation of demonstrations in WP4.
WP3 – Evaluation Framework: development of an impact assessment framework for urban– interurban freight transport interfaces able to capture the complexity of the urban-interurban environment establishing a thorough procedure of analysis for transparent decision making recommendations. The framework includes multiple methodologies, and is applicable to any measure within the urban-interurban context and across regions in Europe.
WP4 – Demonstrations were designed to test and validate a broad set of measures and initiatives that are expected to constitute parts of future sustainable smart urban freight transport systems. Seven demonstrations took place in the project.
WP5 – Impact Assessment: evaluation of all the demonstrations using the framework established in WP3, including development of a roadmap for compliant urban-interurban transport systems and logistics based on lessons learnt and possible generalisations.
WP6 – Recommendations: development of a set of tailored recommendations to improve logistics operations in urban-interurban contexts. The recommendations were based on a synthesis of the results obtained in the previous work packages. This work package thus established a bridge between STRAIGHTSOL results and real world operations.
WP7 – Dissemination and exploitation activities, including measures for maximising the uptake of the STRAIGHTSOL outputs through engagement with stakeholders and ensure that last-mile freight management policy is influenced by the findings.
WP8 – Scientific management of the project; ensured efficient and effective coordination of the project; developed risk management and quality assurance procedures; ensred continuous scientific control of work and results and consistency in the achievements of and workflow between different work packages to support overall project goals.
The structure of the STRAIGHTSOL project and the linkages between the scientific work packages (WP 2 – WP 6) are presented in Figure 1.
The consortium composition was designed to fulfil the research needs that the urban-interurban interfaces represent. The consortium consisted of eight scientific partners and nine demonstrations partners, of which one was a local government. The demonstration partners were bringing actual experiences and actual state-of-the-art into the consortium. Together the chosen demonstrations covered a range of promising measures for promoting future sustainable and smart urban freight systems. The diversified scopes of the demonstrations enabled us to cover a multitude of challenges in urban freight and the urban-interurban shipments context. Together the scientific partners and the demonstrator partners represented a group able to study a multitude of facets of the future smart urban freight transport concepts.
Project Results:
The discussions of scientific and technical results is organised in four parts. We first describe the evaluation framework and then the individual demonstrations; these refer to the first two objectives of STRAIGHTSOL. The last two parts relate to the third STRAIGHTSOL objective, and cover main evaluation conclusions, and recommendations and challenges ahead, respectively.
I. Evaluation framework
Within STRAIGHTSOL a new assessment framework was developed for the evaluation of measures applied to urban-interurban transport interfaces. This evaluation framework has been developed to allow a thorough evaluation of the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations. The framework is however general and can be used for any measures in last mile distribution or urban-interurban freight transport interfaces.
Any actor who is confronted with a problematic urban delivery situation and thinks of several solutions to deal with it can turn to the STRAIGHTSOL framework for structural and comprehensive support in deciding on which solution to choose. The framework can be applied in different stages of this decision making process, before or after measures are tested or implemented.
In the past, many innovative city distribution concepts have failed because not all stakeholders were taken into account (Macharis and Melo, 2010). That is why, within STRAIGHTSOL, these actors and their objectives are considered as the primary focus of the evaluation framework. Important concepts in the evaluation framework are (i) the identification of alternatives, (ii) the identification of stakeholders, (iii) their objectives/criteria and the importance they attach to these objectives (weights), and (iv) the indicators that operationalise the criteria.
Alternatives
The alternatives can be: (i) the current way of working, (ii) the new way of working, (iii) possible other ways of working and (iv) future scenarios.
Stakeholders
Five key stakeholder groups for urban freight transport were identified:
• Shippers: Give order to send the goods
• Logistic Service Providers: Assure and support the transportation service
• Receivers: Receive the goods
• Citizens: Live and consume in the city
• Local Authorities: Regulation and infrastructure provider
Criteria
The stakeholders involved in a given situation usually work towards different goals, sometimes even conflicting ones. In order to properly evaluate a particular solution, initiative or measure, we have to know and understand the criteria by which each stakeholder group judges it. The main aims and objectives (criteria) of the five stakeholder groups were identified through a literature review and a thorough analysis of the input of the stakeholders of the seven STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations. Table 1 shows the identified criteria for each of the five main stakeholder groups.
For each STRAIGHTSOL demonstration it was analysed to which of these criteria the stakeholders give priority by means of an internet survey based on pairwise comparisons. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to determine the weights of the criteria of the various stakeholder groups. It uses hierarchical structures to objectify a decision problem. In order to determine the weights for the evaluation of the demonstrations, surveys were spread among the stakeholders of the different demonstrations. The number of respondents varied from demonstration to demonstration and from stakeholder group to stakeholder group. The weights attributed to criteria by the stakeholder groups vary from demonstration to demonstration as well.
Indicators and KPIs
The criteria are translated into indicators. This means that, based on the stakeholders’ perspective, the indicators represent the criteria by which the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations will be evaluated. A distinction of impact areas is commonly used in studies on sustainability. In addition to the impact areas Environment, Economy and Society (known as the three pillars of sustainability), the impact area Transport was added as a fourth. This resulted in a framework that relates the stakeholders, criteria and impact areas to 31 indicators divided across the four impact areas. Five indicators are defined within the impact area Economy. These focus on the economic perspective and market potential of the intended measure. The indicators all include a monetary aspect. Within the impact area Environment, four indicators are defined that reflect local and global emissions and noise levels. The societal impact area includes a set of nine indicators, including the attitude towards environmental impact, the attractiveness of the environment and acceptance levels (for different actors). The impact area transport is divided into indicators that reflect the quality of service (six), indicators for the efficiency of the transport system (three) and safety and security indicators (four). Not all indicators are, however, key for the evaluation of the demonstrations. It is important to limit the core indicators to those factors that are essential for reaching the objectives of the intended measure while being also reliable measurements. A selection phase is conducted to identify key performance indicators (KPIs).
The indicators that are defined to measure the impacts must be used consistently across the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations. This does not imply, however, that all indicators will be relevant for a particular measure. Nor will it prevent demonstrations from having their own additional indicators for evaluation at a more detailed or local level. Therefore, users of the framework:
• should only select those indicators from the framework that are relevant and applicable for the demonstration under evaluation;
• should define additional indicators when this is required for an assessment at a more detailed, specific or local level.
The STRAIGHTSOL framework is shown in Figure 2. It can be used by a private company who thinks of several possibilities to change its delivery operations and needs an objective and comprehensive basis to make a choice. The framework can also help local governments to design and/or fine tune their urban freight policy and to make sure that the policy is in line with the goals they want to reach.
The framework includes three stages that are fed by initial input. Due to the complex interaction between the many actors in the urban transport, the most essential input is a list of stakeholders whose support is significant for the potential success of a solution and their respective objectives to be taken into account. The STRAIGHTSOL project distinguished five relevant stakeholders in the urban and urban-interurban freight transport context. A set of criteria is defined to represent the objectives of each stakeholder group. Secondly, knowledge of existing urban and urban-interurban freight solutions helps to elaborate alternative city distribution concepts.
The first stage ‘Description and assessment’ aims to first identify the context and the current situation and secondly to explore possible alternatives to the current situation. First of all, a good understanding of the current way of working allows defining the window of opportunities that explains why the initiative taking actor wants to find a better alternative way of working. Also to develop attainable alternatives the fixed context in which they might be implemented has to be clear. To describe the context, a set of characteristics was defined in Deliverable 3.1; these are organised according to three topics: geographical area, initiative characteristics and product characteristics. Knowing the fixed regulations which are in force will help to develop successful alternatives. Therefore, the second part of this stage describes the alternative situations using the knowledge of alternative urban and urban-interurban freight concepts, of the stakeholders and their objectives and of the current situation and the context. A first comparison of the current way of working and the various alternatives is finalising this first stage. In order to be able to properly evaluate the different options, STRAIGHTSOL developed a set of indicators which is used to both characterize the current situation and the alternatives. These indicators are categorized according to the impact area to allow a more efficient evaluation process with the distinction of four impact areas: economy, environment, society and transport. A data collection template is provided as well.
The second stage of the framework, Evaluation of alternatives, aims to perform an overall evaluation of the current situation and the various alternatives. The evaluation covers different perspectives, as it 1) looks at benefits and costs to society; 2) assesses the financial viability for the operator; and 3) integrates all stakeholders’ opinions. The evaluation phase is built upon three methodologies:
• the Social Cost-Benefit Analysis (SCBA) from the field of welfare theory. It addresses the question: Will the concept give more benefits than costs for society?;
• business modelling from the field of marketing. It assesses whether the concept will work, hereby considering financing and value issues;
• the Multi Actor Multi-Criteria Analysis (MAMCA) from the field of strategic management. It focuses on a comparison of alternative solutions from multiple stakeholders’ perspectives.
The combination of those methodologies assures that all essential aspects for project assessment are included in the evaluation. The evaluation phase enables also benchmarking: by comparing the outcome of different alternatives, the best solution for a given situation can be identified. It is possible to use all methods or only one or two; this depends on the scope of evaluation and the questions addressed. Figure 3 shows the link between the stakeholders and the STRAIGHTSOL framework.
The last stage of the framework named ‘Recommendations and lessons learnt’ aims to give recommendations for large scale implementation throughout Europe. For the project under consideration there will be a policy impact assessment, a prioritization of measures and a roadmap towards industrial roll-out, whereas across projects the transferability to other cities is addressed. The outcome of stage 3 will enable decision makers to mutually compare specific measures or initiatives. It will furthermore describe the steps that are required to move from demonstration to large scale implementation and to reach long-term objectives. This will enable the different actors to plan and coordinate the further deployment of measures and to make the innovation happen.
II. Demonstrations
STRAIGTHSOL supported seven innovative field demonstrations showcasing increased efficiency and sustainability of urban freight transport and improved connections between urban and interurban freight transport. The demonstrations were:
• urban consolidation centre in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona, ES), by DHL;
• city logistics mobile depot in Brussels (BE) by TNT Express;
• remote ‘bring-site’ monitoring near London (UK) by Oxfam;
• rail tracking and warehouse management in Thessaloniki (GR) by Kuehne+Nagel;
• retail supply management and last mile distribution in Oslo (NO) by GS1 Norway;
• loading/unloading operations management and regulations in Lisbon (PT) by EMEL;
• night-time deliveries in Brussels (BE) by Colruyt and Delhaize.
Each of the demonstrations and main evaluation findings are summarised below.
DHL’s Urban Consolidation Centre in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat – Barcelona (Spain)
During the last years, an increasing number of commercial vehicles have been entering the city centre of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, illegal parking operations take place due to oversaturated loading/unloading (L/U) places, and there is a lack of distribution regulations. This results in low vehicle load factor, high operational costs in the last mile distribution, excessive GHG emissions and noise pollution, as well as severe congestion. In general, in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, there is a lack of a clear and uniform regulation to favour efficient urban delivery strategies. However, the city council had an interest in solving the issues at hand. To improve the performance of urban freight deliveries in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, DHL Supply Chain Spain operated an urban consolidation centre (UCC) in order to reduce the number of vehicles entering the defined area (last mile distribution) while maintaining the service levels. The shipment consolidation in the UCC consolidated the delivery load of several carriers to retailers located in a territorial enclave in the city centre. During the evolution of the project, the concept evolved to a Hybrid Consolidation Centre. The distribution to the city centre was combined with other multi-customer supply chains already managed by DHL Supply Chain, but individually. Then volumes were consolidated and an overall optimisation took place. In L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, the big demand attractor was the sum of supply chains where the UCC operated by DHL received the goods and consolidated all. Then, the logistics infrastructure was optimised by the integration of several supply chain sizes.
The demonstration area was the city center of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. It is characterised by a mix of residential and commercial areas, surrounded by a ring of residential areas and a ring of warehouses. The initial plan was to give service to two central neighbourhoods (Centro and Sant Josep), but during the development the service was extended to a third neighbourhood (Santa Eulàlia).
Key stakeholders were:
• Service Provider-UCC Manager (DHL Supply Chain Spain)
• DHL surrounding platforms/supply chains
• Receivers - Stores
• Local administration – L’Hospitalet de Llobregat City Council
• Logistics Service Providers
The demonstration was able to reduce transport costs around 25%, which is really significant. However, the handling costs of the terminal were high and difficult to compensate. In terms of effects to the environment, results prove to be positive in emissions and noise. However, in order to continue the demonstration as a permanent solution from a commercial perspective, some revenues have to be genereated in order to facilitate a feasible business model. From the general overview of costs and benefits for all stakeholders it is clear that the UCC manager assumes all the costs generated, while benefits are shared among LSP, retailers and the city council. It is clear that each of the stakeholders that are benefitted from the measure should absorb at least part of the costs. Each one can do it through a channel that fits the general context. LSP could pay a fee to the UCC manager in order to use the service, which can be compensated with their cost reduction experienced. In the case of the retailers, it is very difficult to convince them to purchase the service, even though there are benefits for them; however, they might be willing to pay if the city council could reimbudse part of the pay though tax reductions. The city council may contribute through different options. Direct or indirect subsidies may be provided.
Regarding the lessons learnt, one of the most critical issues detected is the involvement of the stores. In order to continue the demonstration on a larger scale more stores have to be engaged in the solution or alternatively other potential customers like hospitals, administrations, and universities have to be engaged. Thus, the involvement and the leadership from local administrations will be crucial to attract the attention of all the involved stakeholders.
The second barrier relates to municipalities/public sector readiness to buy this solution in the short term. Currently, launching public and private partnerships to enable business through consolidation centres does not seem to be given priority. On the other side, agreements among different private companies such as retailers and logistics parties represent a more realistic option for building feasible distribution models. In this line, there are some European and National cooperation projects working at designing IT systems which can give a proper synergy for all the actors, but this is still a goal to achieve.
Mobile Depot – TNT Express
As most large European cities, Brussels is a congested city in terms of traffic jams. Drivers in Brussels face average delays of over 33% during peak hours. This does not only affect individuals driving their cars; it also hampers urban deliveries as these are usually carried out by van or by small truck. The combination of diesel vehicles and a congested urban area makes urban deliveries environmentally unfriendly. Furthermore, these delivery vehicles also contribute to the traffic jams. There is also room for improvement from the viewpoint of the operator: having to deal with busy traffic and congestion makes it expensive to keep the inner-city deliveries and pick-ups reliable and fast and makes it difficult to be considerate of the environment. This is also the case for TNT Express. As a global express parcel service provider, many of the company’s operations take place in urban settings. That is why they are open to testing innovative solutions which are cost-efficient, less hindered by congestion and emission free. They developed a new concept: the Mobile Depot (MD). It is a trailer fitted with a loading dock and warehousing facilities that can be used to take the inner-city deliveries from a depot outside the city to a central parking location. From there, the final deliveries are carried out by dispatch riders on electrically driven tricycles and by small electric cars.
The MD was used by TNT Express for a period of three months (28 May 2013 – 22 August 2013) to do their pick-ups and deliveries in a part of the city-centre of Brussels. It concerns postal code areas 1030, 1040 and 1210, which are related to the municipalities Schaarbeek, Etterbeek and Sint-Joost-ten-Node. It is an area of just over 12 square kilometres which is densely populated and highly urbanized. There is no commercial dominance in the area. The area was chosen by TNT Express because of its relatively high drop density of small shipments. The MD arrived at the Parc du Cinquantenaire around 9.15 am. From there, the deliveries and pick-ups were, depending on the volume of that day, carried out by four dispatch riders on electrically driven cyclocargos. During the twelve weeks the MD was tested, 1.292 pick-ups and 5.286 deliveries were done and 4.534 cyclocargo kilometres and 2.544 truck kilometres were driven.
Regular TNT Express deliveries and pick-ups in Brussels are carried out from the TNT depot at the Brussels freight airport Brucargo. Two types of vehicles are used for that. Diesel trucks to do the pallet deliveries and pick-ups and diesel vans for parcels and documents. The parcels and documents destined for a particular part of the Brussels-Capital Region are loaded onto the vans each morning. Around 9 am, the vans start their milk round doing both pick-ups and deliveries. Around 6 pm, they return to the depot from where the new parcels and documents leave for their final destination. Because the cyclocargos that were used in combination with the MD cannot transport big volumes, the pallet deliveries were not further taken into account. For the duration of the demonstrations, TNT Express carried out the last-mile deliveries and first-mile pick-ups in the centre of Brussels from an MD. Each morning, the trailer was loaded at the TNT hub with all deliveries destined for the demonstration area for that day and then driven to a predefined central location in the Parc du Cinquantenaire.
TNT Express was the initiator and owner of this STRAIGHTSOL demonstration. They are a global express parcel service provider commissioned by their clients to transport parcels and documents from their pick-up point to their final destination. Their aim is to provide as much service as possible for the lowest cost possible. TNT Express developed the MD because they believed the solution could both be cost-efficient as well as environmentally friendlier than their normal way of working. TNT Express subcontracts (parts of) the actual transport to local subcontractors. These transport companies are important stakeholders. It is their aim to provide as much service as possible to TNT for the lowest cost possible. During the demonstration, the most important transport company to take into account was the subcontractor carrying out the cyclocargo deliveries. The parking location of the MD in the city-centre was chosen close to the depot of the cyclocargo courier.
The third stakeholder group are the receivers of the TNT Express shipments. They are the final addressees of the shipments and the clients of the fourth stakeholder group, the shippers. Both stakeholders want to keep receiving the same service (at the same price), even if the practical operations are changed. The MD was designed in a way that TNT Express could perform the deliveries in the best possible way.
With the Mobile Depot solution, TNT Express aims to decrease its carbon footprint and to contribute to more sustainable city logistics. This aim fits the objectives of the fifth and sixth stakeholder group very well: the local authorities and the citizens. The local authorities aim to provide a sound living environment as well as a good business climate. No additional measures from the local authorities are needed to implement this measure. However, during the demonstration, the local administration provided a suitable parking location where the MD could be parked during the day and where the loading and unloading operations could take place. The local administration had to issue a local parking ban for the duration of the demonstration. The citizens are the people living, working and spending their free time in Brussels. They want to be able to live their lives as they want in a safe and healthy environment.
The scale of the demonstration was too small to be able to measure an impact on the air quality in the demonstration area. That is why the impact on the emission of pollutants was calculated based on the number of kilometres driven by a specific type of vehicle using the STREAM emission factors (Den Boer et al., 2011).
Business As Usual Mobile Depot Impact MD
CO2 (g/vkm) 340 258,5 -24%
SO2 (mg/vkm) 2,6 1,97 -24%
NOx (g/vkm) 1,25 1,5 +48%
PM2,5 (mg/vkm) 145 59,73 -59%
PM10 (mg/vkm) 30,5 23,77 -22%
Delivering through the MD has an impact on the punctuality of the deliveries and pick-ups. In the before situation, 95.27% of the shipments was delivered on time whilst during the demonstration only 87.56% was delivered on time (wrong addresses, companies that are closed or people that are not at home are not taken into account here). According to TNT Express, the lower punctuality can partly be attributed to the fact that this was a demonstration project and both TNT Express and its subcontractor had to adjust their operations.
The analysis of the demonstration reults showed that more shipments were delivered and picked up before the lunch hour when deliveries were performed with diesel vans. This can be explained by the MD trip between the airport and the parking location and by the additional handling needed to load the cyclocargos.
In the short run, using an MD will not influence the operating revenues as senders cannot choose whether or not their shipment will be delivered through the MD. During the demonstration, doing the deliveries and pick-ups through the MD was twice as expensive compared to the initial situation with vans. In the evaluation we also considered upscaled versions of the demonstrated solutions. The cost-benefit analysis showed that when the mobile depot is used at 90% capacity, the total monthly costs are about 69% higher than in the baseline scenario. The demonstrated concept is more expensive than the business as usual, which follows from the fact that the cost per stop of the zero emission (ZE) sub-contractor is 9% higher than in the initial situation. On top of that are the costs to purchase, move and operate the mobile depot. In order to be competitive with the van delivery, the difference in cost per stop should be in favour of ZE delivery. In addition, the mobile depot related costs for TNT should be reduced where possible.
The MAMCA clearly revealed that the scenarios that are supported by the citizens and the authorities are not supported by the operator, receivers and senders and vice versa. This dilemma is caused by the fact that the concept is societally very relevant but in its current form not financially viable.
Remote 'bring-site' monitoring for more reactive and sustainable logistics – Oxfam
The demonstration concept was to install remote monitoring sensors in Oxfam donation banks to provide up-to-date information about bank fill levels, with a view to scheduling collection vehicles more efficiently. This was motivated by perceived inefficiencies associated with either visiting banks too early (when not containing much) or too late (overflowing banks). Oxfam’s main aims were to reduce their collection costs by reducing vehicle mileage and time spent making collections. In doing so, there would be societal benefit through the associated reduced vehicle emissions, contribution to traffic congestion etc.
Infra-red sensors designed for this type of application were purchased from a third party equipment provider, Smartbin.com©, who also hosted the web interface to the sensor data. A data reporting level of two reports per day was provided, although only daily reporting was actually required. Daily vehicle schedules were devised with the aid of a bespoke algorithm developed and run by the University of Southampton. The algorithm’s suggested routes were checked for suitability by Oxfam’s transport manager and modified as desired before being implemented the next working day.
In the initial design and trial implementation, all donation banks in the demonstration area were equipped with sensors; however, due to technical problems, by the time of the live demonstration only 53% (40/75) of banks were monitored. Historical bank data were used to estimate bank fill levels in the absence of any remote monitoring data.
The demo was based at Oxfam’s Southern Logistics Centre, Milton Keynes, UK (around 90km north-west of London). A vehicle fleet of up to 5 lorries (carrying capacity: 6T) and one van (carrying capacity 1.4T) was available to be used each day, with four or five vehicles typically being required on any given day. The live demo ran during the period 9 May to 19 July, 2013.
The scope of the demonstration area was considered to be appropriate as:
• The number of vehicles gave opportunities for moving collections between vehicles as required
• The geographical extent and duration gave robust and meaningful results
• The vehicle scheduling and routing task was manageable
The only key stakeholder was Oxfam, both as logistics service provider (i.e. in-house collections) and receiver of the donated goods. Secondary stakeholders were the site owners (typically supermarkets who provided space in car parks to house the donation banks) and members of the public donating goods; however, as the demonstration was not expected to have any noticeable effect on them, they did not have any influence on the demonstration design.
A scaled cost-benefit analysis was performed (reported in Deliverable 5.3) based on an implementation five times the size of the demonstration (e.g. in five collection areas of a similar size). The same network coverage (53% of equipped banks) was assumed for consistency. It was found that the time and distance savings seen in the demonstration (~3%) did not offset the additional time required for managing the more complex transport operations (~2 hours/day extra), therefore the demonstration concept was not cost-effective for Oxfam and they have discontinued the use of remote monitoring sensors. The main reason for the relatively small transport benefit was Oxfam’s constraint of having fixed collection days for shops. These collections tended to dominate the round structures and severely limited the opportunities for dynamic scheduling. Without such constraints, transport benefits of up to 25% were estimated. This means that the remote monitoring concept remains a valid proposition but only in applications where round structures are free from too many restrictions. A modified version of the scaled cost-benefit analysis was performed based on a transport of benefit of 15% rather than the 3% obtained in the demonstration, which gives an estimated payback time of around 15 months.
Key lessons learnt were:
• Need for more flexibility in shop servicing - Shop servicing requirements are the main influencers of the vehicle rounds, giving limited scope for dynamic bank scheduling to reduce transport costs. As such, it may be better to visit shops in a more dynamic way, as well as, or instead of, dynamic bank visits to obtain greater benefits.
• Need for more automated management systems - Concern had been expressed by Oxfam of data overload for Oxfam’s transport and retail teams; systems should be developed to provide managers with the summary information they need.
• Sensor technology – Smartbin learned valuable lessons about their sensors as a result of the technical problems that were encountered during the demonstration. This resulted in improvements being made to their products.
Kuehne+Nagel - Rail tracking and warehouse management
Kuehne+Nagel S.A. (K+N) in Greece is an international logistics service provider, responsible for the supply chain management from Central Europe to the Balkan countries. Within STRAIGHTSOL project’s demonstration the focus was set on the cargo transfer from Sopron, Hungary to Thessaloniki, Greece, where the consolidation and the last mile delivery of goods takes place. The analyzed freight route comprises two discrete, but successive transportation legs: the interurban part from Sopron to Thessaloniki implemented by train (rail wagons in block trains) and the urban one performed by road (conventional engine trucks and vans) incorporating the last mile distribution.
Information on cargo location was previously provided manually, after on-site recording of cargo status by the local rail operator's personnel. Information capturing and sharing using conventional means led to lack of or erroneous information, directly affecting waiting times of trucks and the planning of the next legs (e.g. last mile distribution). This also had an adverse impact on terminal activities (warehouse management, cargo handling etc.). Gaps in the interconnection of the two successive transportation legs resulted in the creation of a huge administrative burden, with excess costs degrading the company's image as a logistics service provider. According to K+N’s statistics, previously 26.89% of wagons were delayed for more than one day for various reasons, with 11.5% of these being removed (cut-off) from the block train. The demonstration aimed to ameliorate these problems through the tracking of rail wagons and cargo. Focusing on last mile distribution, there was an urgent need for better organization based on updated and reliable information on the rail cargo location and estimated time of arrival (ETA), towards the elimination of delays that lead to false truck assignments and associated costs. According to initial estimations, many of the costs and losses for K+N could be avoided.
The concept was to optimize the interconnection of the two transportation legs using a GPS-based monitoring system in interurban transport and an information sharing platform open to directly involved stakeholders, linked to the warehouse management system, in order to better coordinate the urban distribution. GPS-enabled devices were mounted onto rail wagons used by K+N for transporting goods and real-time information was provided to K+N on cargo location, assisting in the identification of delays, cut-off wagons, unexpected events, etc. In case of such unexpected incidents, notification alerts were sent to K+N and they, in turn, directly updated their customers or other involved stakeholders on expected time delays of the goods ordered. The action plan is briefed below:
1. Installation of GPS-based monitoring system for the tracking of rail wagons and their cargo during the interurban transportation leg.
2. Interconnection of the new monitoring system to K+N’s intranet to provide real time information on location to K+N, to each stakeholder or partner - Use of E-PoDs in last mile distribution based on live feed from the GPS-based monitoring system.
3. Integration of the GPS-based monitoring system into the existent K+N’s monitoring system architecture, achieving considerable time and cost savings for K+N and other stakeholders.
Based on the customer's demand and interest, during the first period of demonstration tests (5 months), six GPS devices were purchased and enabled the monitoring of 24 wagons per month (3% of the total).
The demonstration took place in the Thessaloniki Greater Area (including city centre and interurban area) and K+N's terminal and warehouse facilities in Sindos industrial zone, some 30km from Thessaloniki city center. The demonstration area was approximately 1,500 km2 including the area where the last-mile operations of K+N and its customers took place. Concerning the collection of data, the demonstration ran from November 2012 until March 2013, but all systems and the general concept are still in full operation.
The stakeholders involved in the demonstration were K+N as logistics service provider, their customers (shippers or shipping companies and receivers of goods), the national rail authorities of each one of the involved countries as infrastructure and equipment provider, the truck operators as partners of K+N implementing the task of last mile distribution and the public, as consumers of the transported goods and also being externally impacted by the concept running.
The results were encouraging and were close to maximum estimates leading to a 4,5% reduction in total truck-kms/month and of respective CO2 emissions/month, as well as to a 9% increase and 4% increase in time and ‘quantity’ punctuality of deliveries - gradual increase of customer satisfaction/stakeholders’ attitude towards environmental impact and demo concept acceptability, as revealed from the stakeholder questionnaire survey that took place during the winter 2012-2013). It is estimated that with the gradual purchase of GPS devices for all rail wagons and after the successful facing of several communication deficiencies in the data transmission, the total cost savings for K+N reach the 1500€/month, while the reduction in truck-kms is estimated to be 1200 kms/month, equating to CO2 emissions savings of around 1kg/month.
The most important lessons learnt were:
• The automation of several processes, such as the vehicle and cargo tracking and tracing, provided the opportunity for better human resource management, relieving the personnel from time consuming modules and tasks, leading to the upgrading of the company’s level of provided services.
• The limited battery life of GPS devices (7-8 days max), often caused power supply problems especially when the duration of the rail trip from Sopron to Thessaloniki lasted for more than 7 days (including delays).
• Differences and gaps in the communication protocol between neighbouring countries during the transmission of data caused low data transmission rate (36% successful runs).
• The GPS devices were not plug ‘n’ play, so for each different case in the future, there will be a need to adjust them according to the respective operational needs and in compliance with the communication protocol and standards of the area of study or application. Technical issues concerning communication standards’ incompatibility, energy autonomy and data transmission rate must be faced in order to acquire an exploitable added value service.
• There was much difficulty in finding capable personnel in Sopron railway station to affix the GPS devices onto rail wagons and setting them on at train departure.
• Uneven level of information provision on cargo location (low in Sopron, not at all in Serbia).
• Regarding GPS system, the high vegetation and special infrastructure (i.e. tunnels) hinder the data transmission on cargo location.
• Prompt and seamless information provision was achieved through the information interface facilitating regular and on-demand update on cargo location to K+N and, in turn, to K+N’s customers (shippers and/or receivers).
• Enhanced information provision assists the mitigation of false assignments and waiting times for truck operators, reducing the respective costs and CO2 emissions.
• Handling the GPS devices (affixation on wagons, recharging and returning of the device to the initial point of rail trip) constitutes a complex procedure, also incorporating significant costs which have to be charged to the customer or be internalised by the logistics service provider or the rail operator. Otherwise, the added value is counterbalanced by the increased costs, which is associated to the possible decrease in the attractiveness of the provided services due to the low ratio of cost over value. In many cases, the price the customer has to pay for the real time monitoring service is disproportionate to the expected benefit or the (small) value of the transported goods, so it is either not worth it or unnecessary. A feasible solution could include charging specific types of cargo (high value, perishable goods, vulnerable cargo, etc.).
Retail Supply Management and Last Mile Distribution in Oslo – GS1 Norway
While receiving goods, many shop owners neither know if their goods will arrive on time nor how many items they will receive at a time. Stock management is often handled at chain levels and not by the individual stores. Some shops engage extra staff when they expect deliveries, while others accept to use extra hours before all arrived items are placed on the shelves or in an appropriate storage area. In either case, it would be very useful for the shopkeepers to get more precise information on their inbound shipments before they arrive. Moreover, the norm is that the driver has to bring the loads into each store that receives items and then receives his proof of delivery. In shopping centres there are often long distances from the freight reception areas to the individual shops. For a truck delivering several pallets to shops in a shopping centre, the driver may need to spend a significant amount of time bringing pallets to the shops, as he can only bring one pallet at a time. During this time the truck occupies space in the freight reception area, which may affect the efficiency of the unloading from other trucks. There is thus a potential for improvement of the freight reception process in shopping centres. The aim of the demonstration was thus to demonstrate smarter solutions for information collection and sharing between stakeholders in the supply chain by use of GS1 standards, and to demonstrate the usefulness of joint buffer storage facilities in shopping centres.
The GS1 Oslo demonstration took place at Stovner senter, which is a shopping centre in Oslo, Norway with approximately 100 shops. The centre receives deliveries from multiple warehouses in the Oslo area. The centre was owned by the Steen & Strøm Corporation of shopping centres, but has been sold to a different owner after the demo took place. Several retail chains and logistics service providers participated in the demonstration.
The demonstration was planned and organised by GS1 Norway, and the demonstration concept was developed in close cooperation with the stakeholders involved. The local shopping centre manager as well as their owner Steen & Strøm were actively involved and contributed with room for buffer storage as well as extended agreement with their security company Securitas who operated the buffer storage. Several logistics service providers, retail chains and retailers participated with their cargo, and the necessary software and hardware for information collection sharing were obtained from technology providers. The municipality of Oslo were consulted and involved in the discussions when the demonstration was planned.
The basic concept of the demonstration was to collect information on shipments destined for shops in a shopping centre in Oslo which receives deliveries from multiple warehouses in the Oslo area. For deliveries to the shops participating in the demonstration, information on shipments was collected at different critical control points through the last-mile delivery and shared with the final receivers of goods by the use of GS1 Event Management standard. A storage room was made available as a buffer storage area, entry to which was handled by a guard from the shopping centre's security company, who could also bring the goods from the buffer storage area to the shops when requested by the shops. The use of this buffer storage area was optional, and facilitated reduced stoppage times for trucks. Event Information was collected at different critical control points through the last-mile delivery like the warehouse/terminal of the retail chain or logistics service.
The most significant positive effects of the demonstration were that stoppage time of trucks could be reduced by up to 15 minutes per pallet, and that shops were offered a better service because they obtained better information on inbound shipments and also could choose when they had their items delivered. The use of Geofencing at chosen points generated event messages to shop managers about expected deliveries. The direct environmental effects were positive, but limited in scale. More significant environmental effects can be obtained with a large-scale implementation where the logistics service providers may re-optimize their distribution due to the savings obtained.
The main challenge for further implementations is that costs and benefits are dispersed on several stakeholders, and that transfer of benefits between stakeholders may be necessary.
Loading/Unloading Operations Management and Regulations in Lisbon - EMEL
The motivation for the EMEL demo was to tackle Lisbon’s growing problems with unregulated loading/unloading activities, which often cause road congestion and even blockage (by trucks stopping on narrow streets for quick loading/unloading activities) and with illegal parking (e.g. trucks and vans parked on sidewalks, double-parked, or parked on places for private cars, and private cars parked on places for freight operations). The Municipal Regulation for On-street Parking (which included the rules for loading and unloading activities) was approved in 2004 (Municipal Regulation no. 85/AM/2004) but never went into force due to lack of a suitable technological solution to support it. It was therefore completely suspended in March 2007 until a feasible technical solution is found. Furthermore there is neither a national legislation to regulate loading/unloading activities nor efficient enforcement to regulate traffic and parking. As a consequence, significant conflicts exist between the urban freight operations, pedestrians, private car users and public transport.
EMEL, Lisbon’s Public Municipal Company for Parking and Mobility, was thus commissioned to find a technological solution to support the revision and entry into force of a new Municipal Regulation. This technology should ensure that parking surveillance becomes more efficient and can be done in real time, and it shouldn’t represent a heavy financial burden to the city.
This is the framework in which the STRAIGHTSOL demo was developed. Its goal was threefold:
• Testing and identifying technologies for controlling and monitoring cargo activities (loading/unloading) in the urban context.
• Providing evidence and the grounds for developing the Municipal Regulation on loading and unloading operations;
• Applying the chosen technology to the rest of the city.
This demonstration tested two different technological schemes to monitor and manage loading/unloading operations. The demo took place in avenue Guerra Junqueiro in Lisbon. This is a 450m long avenue which was chosen due to the great diversity of shops (ranging from small shops to large ones) and of loading and unloading procedures used (by hand, in pallets, in trolleys, etc.). It started on Dec 5th, 2011 and lasted until April 30th, 2012.
On one side of the street the existing parking meters were adapted so that they can issue a special ticket valid for 30 minutes for freight loading/unloading (Adapted Parking Metres or APM). For this, drivers have to expose a contactless card to the APM. The parking officers have then to check whether tickets under the windshield did not exceed the 30 minutes. On the other side of the street some Vehicle Detection Sensors (VDS) were installed on the road surface. These are activated by the presence of a vehicle in the parking place above them and then send a message to EMEL’s control centre. The driver gets 30 minutes to finish the loading or unloading operations and leave the parking space. The VDS are, however, not able to automatically detect whether the parked vehicle is allowed to use the freight operation parking space or is only a private car illegally parked, so this needs to be visually checked by parking officers, who can notify the drivers in case of non-compliances.
There were different types of stakeholders involved in the solution tested whose role, level of participation and interest in the solution differ. EMEL was the main stakeholder as the demo initiator, and it is responsible for the implementation of the technologies and for executing all additional activities. From the outset the following stakeholders have also been affected by the implementation of this demo:
• Transport operators, whose cooperation in the demo is asked for, namely to use adequately the contactless cards; on the other hand, these stakeholders will expectedly have the efficiency in their loading/unloading operations increased by the demo;
• Local Chamber of Commerce, who plays an important role in communicating with and engaging the shop owners and shopkeepers in the demo;
• Shippers and freight receivers (shopkeepers), who will benefit from more reliable deliveries;
• Other road users, who at one hand will be less affected by freight deliveries but on the other hand may face more restricted parking regimes.
This demo had effects on the functioning of the transport system and on the freight operations. Some improvements were expected regarding the punctuality of deliveries, thus leading to an improvement in the customer satisfaction – however this was not possible to measure. A reduction on the illegal (on-street) parking affecting traffic circulation was expected, and the information on illegal parking that was collected showed that there was indeed a reduction of occurrences with the implementation of the demo. Also considered as relevant for this demo were the number of deliveries and pick-ups and the time for loading and unloading activities. Data for these two items was collected but no significant changes have been found. The demo also allowed the identification of the challenges and needs for improvement associated to each one of the technologies being tested. These can be grouped as technical/technological, regulatory, cost/financial, market and business aspects and involvement of stakeholders. Only a small increase in revenues was expected with this demo, and it was not been quantified.
As for the costs, the most relevant ones were:
• investment costs, which are the costs related to installing the technologies (roughly 500€ / parking space for the VDSes with an estimated lifetime of 5 years, and 7500€ for each APM, which also serves as a normal parking meter; a “regular” parking meter would cost 5000€; estimated APM lifetime: 7 years).
• Operating costs, which include communications (between the sensors or parking meters and the control centre), maintenance and management costs; as the system works on solar energy there are no energy related costs.
• Enforcement costs, around 30€/place/month.
Regarding the lessons learnt from the demo, it’s possible to highlight the great importance of properly engaging all the stakeholders from the outset of the project. In this specific demo, the cooperation of the stakeholders was crucial as they had an active role in the process and thus were key partners for making the initiative work. As another side to this, it is also very important to have an effective enforcement scheme that ensures all the non-willing to cooperate comply with the rules.
It is also a noteworthy finding that in a project in which a technological solution is sought it might be interesting to let the market come up with the best solution possible. This can be achieved by making a tender which specifies the main issues to be addressed instead of making a full specification, and thus letting competitive innovation work. However it is important that this specification is complete and well-done so that the solution found is feasible, reliable and fully matches the needs. This is what was done after the EMEL demo was finished.
Night Deliveries in Brussels – Colruyt and Delhaize
Multiple traffic service providers rank Brussels as the most congested European city. Drivers in Brussels face average delays of over 33% during peak traffic hours. These delays do not only affect the everyday commuter, but also the inner-city freight deliverer. Delays might be reduced by shifting deliveries to hours with less congestion. The potential time gains have increased the interest among carriers and the bigger retail chains to shift some of the deliveries to the off-peak hours.
This is also the case for Colruyt and Delhaize, the two biggest Belgian food retailers. In the Brussels-Capital Region they operate 39 big supermarkets. Based on their experiences with off-peak deliveries in other Belgian cities, both retailers are keen to shift some of the daily deliveries to these supermarkets to the night, late evening or early morning. Both believe that deliveries during off-peak hours would be a way to better spread their operations and the goods reception at the shops. They also believe that time and fuel savings would be achieved by avoiding traffic congestion during peak hours. The idea could also be beneficial for society in terms of reduced congestion, increased traffic safety and fewer emissions. Most shops in Brussels which are located in residential areas, however, currently have an environmental permit that does not allow them to load and unload during the night because of the possible noise nuisance produced by manoeuvring diesel trucks and the equipment used during loading and unloading operations. To overcome that, both retailers did several investments for quiet deliveries including silent trailers, silent trucks, covered loading and unloading docks, silent rolling stock and educating drivers to work quietly.
The demonstration took place at five retail shops within the Brussels-Capital Region, three of Delhaize and two of Colruyt. Some of the deliveries that usually take place during the day (8am – 8pm) were shifted to another time of day; be it early mornings (6am – 8am), late evenings (8pm – 10pm) or the night (10pm – 6am). The demonstration took place between January 2014 and April 2014. The five demonstration sites mutually differ in distance to the closest neighbour, covered (un)loading dock or not, restrictive environmental permit or not, relationship with the surrounding neighbours and location in the Brussels-Capital Region.
The environmental permit of retail shops located in the Brussels-Capital Region dictates when deliveries and pick-ups are allowed. For most shops in the Region, deliveries cannot be made during the night. Usually, deliveries should end at 9 or 10pm and cannot start before 6 or 7am. For night deliveries to become a common practice all of these environmental permits would have to be changed or the legislation should be changed. Local authorities, however, are not inclined to do that without a guaranteed night’s rest for the local residents. That is also the reason why they set maximum noise levels that cannot be exceeded.
The demonstration consisted of two parts. During the first phase, at each demonstration site the noise levels during one complete delivery routine using silent trailers, trucks and rolling stock and taking place between 8pm and 10pm were measured. The measurements were in line with the Noise Abatement Law in force. Based on these results, temporary permits were granted to carry out night-time deliveries during the second phase. The night-time deliveries were tested for a period of 2 weeks for each Colruyt shop and for a period of one week for each Delhaize shop.
Colruyt and Delhaize were the initiators and owners of this STRAIGHTSOL demonstration. They are large retailers acting as sender, receiver and transport company at the same time whereby they deliver to their shops from their distribution centres. Their aim is to provide a good customer service in a cost efficient way less hindered by congestion. Night time deliveries could lead to a lower fuel consumption and allow for better capacity utilisation of both the workforce located at the shops and of the road network. Both retailers believe that they can cut costs without causing extra nuisance to local residents while a shift of deliveries can also contribute to a safer and more eco-friendly environment. Colruyt and Delhaize invested in silent equipment to make night deliveries possible. The aim of the retailers is to demonstrate to two important stakeholders – the local authorities and the citizens – that it is possible to perform night-time deliveries without causing additional noise nuisance.
In order to carry out deliveries during the night, early morning or late evening, Colruyt and Delhaize are dependent upon the local authorities of the Brussels-Capital Region. The local authorities want to provide a sound living environment for their citizens. Although it is assumed that performing night deliveries will have a positive impact for the citizens of Brussels in general, local authorities pay special attention to the noise impact of night deliveries on the people living in the vicinity of the shops. They are not inclined to change the environmental permit or legislation without a guaranteed night’s rest for the local residents. Based on the results of noise measurements with silent material, temporary permits were granted to carry out night-time deliveries. The citizens are the people living, working and spending their free time in Brussels. They want to be able to live their lives as they want it in a safe and healthy environment.
In total 99 deliveries were carried out to the two Colruyt shops during the demonstration period using a combination of Euro 6 and CNG vehicles. The goal was to have deliveries evenly spread over 24 hours.
Although Colruyt and Delhaize are two separate retailers, the analysis is based on data from Colruyt. This is because much less Delhaize data were available on time. Assumptions have been verified with expert opinions. The outcome on the (social) business case is expected to be about similar for Delhaize. To be able to compare business as usual with the demonstration, Colruyt collected data on the trips that were shifted as well as on some of the ‘normal’ trips. These data were used to reconstruct two normal weeks for each site and the two demonstration weeks which means that we do not compare day deliveries with night deliveries, but we compare a particular distribution of deliveries throughout the day. The impact on the emission of pollutants was calculated based on the average fuel consumption. Deliveries during off-peak hours have an impact on the average speed of the delivery trucks to and from the shops that participated. During the night, the evening and the morning the average speed is higher than during the day.
There is a big difference in average fuel consumption depending on the time of the day the delivery takes place. The fuel consumption for the evening deliveries seems to be more than twice as high as the fuel consumption for morning deliveries, but there are few observations and may be errors in the estimates. Night deliveries score better than day deliveries. The average speed during the night is not that much higher than during the evening or morning which makes it difficult to understand that the average fuel consumption during the morning is so low and the average consumption during the evening is so high. Because of the use of a CNG truck during the demonstration, the emission of CO2 was higher. When more deliveries are shifted from the day to the night using a Euro 6 diesel truck, the emission of CO2 would decrease (as it is directly linked to the average fuel consumption). This can be explained by the fact that CNG vehicles have not enough power to pull full load trailers which leads to higher CO2 emissions.
The time needed by the driver to load and unload the goods is also impacted by the time of day. The least time is needed when deliveries are done between 6am and 8am (morning) because there is somebody at the shop to help the driver unload and there is not much other work yet for that person. During the night, loading and unloading takes, on average, 16% longer than during the day because there is no one at the shop to help the driver. Night deliveries do not directly influence revenue streams, at least they were not noticeably affected during the demonstration. It can be assumed that when shops are delivered to at night, the chance of empty shelves for customers in the morning reduces, which can have a positive effect on sales revenue over time. In the pilot scenario, the capital expenses increase with 24% due to investments in silent equipment, while the operational expenses decrease with 8%. The total effect is an increase of 3%.
The MAMCA revealed that night deliveries are favoured by Colruyt as well as by the local authorities and the citizens. The bigger the shift of deliveries away from the day, the better the objectives of the three stakeholder groups are served. The main hindrance is, however, the noise nuisance that despite the measures that were taken increases somewhat during the night compared to a situation without night deliveries.
Night-time deliveries, TNT Innight
The demonstration by TNT Innight in Utrecht (NL) had to be cancelled during the project. The goal of the TNT demonstration in Utrecht was to test innovative night-delivery (B2C) concepts that responded to the needs of urban receivers, allowing to shift more vehicle movements from day to night-time. The demonstration’s approach was to test intelligent lockers as secure pick-up and drop-off locations for small parcels, and the plan was that TNT Innight would operate these intelligent lockers during the night. Due to internal TNT issues these plans of having a B2C approach had to be turned into a B2B instead. However, business clients were reluctant because they expected it would raise their costs and/or doubted the reliability and safety of night deliveries. So the new demo was redesigned to test innovative concepts/technologies that would respond to these concerns.
That approach would demand the cooperation of receivers, but usual TNT Express clients are usually the sender of the good. They therefore had to approach companies that outsource the transport from their own depot to their shops or other warehouses to a 3PL - they were able to identify three possible candidates to participate in the demonstration. One of these was a fashion retail chain, which despite believing that night-time deliveries might lead to efficiency gains, did not believe that these gains would decrease costs due to the investments needed for the new technologies (it could be cheaper for the shops participating in the STRAIGHTSOL demo because of the support of the European Commission, but not on the long run).
The other two candidates were outsourcing their logistics activities to another 3PL and also declined to participate – the first because they were afraid that the reliability of the deliveries would not be guaranteed if they changed their 3PL and shifted from day to night deliveries at the same time, and the second because they felt there were security and insurance risks.
TNT Innight also had some remarks regarding this demo. Although they already operated an express night delivery service and believed that night-time deliveries allow them to achieve their goals and objectives, they indicate that night-time deliveries are only cheaper than daytime deliveries if the volumes are big enough and if the delivery network is dense enough. Due to the reluctance of receivers, in some cities or regions this can be an issue. Secondly, TNT Express was not very keen to pass some of its own freight flows onto its TNT Innight division.
Finally, from the side of the local authorities: they do not promote, induce or oblige night-time deliveries because they do not trust the noise impact if the concept is implemented on a large scale.
III. Evaluation of demonstrations
The description of effects and lessons learnt for the individual demonstrations above were based on the evaluation work done for each demonstration. If we look across the STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations and investigate the three main evaluation topics, some general conclusions may be drawn.
Socio-economic effects and environment
Although difficult to measure during the demonstrations, positive effects on polluting emissions are expected for almost all demonstrations. Either because trucks are used more efficiently (GS1, DHL, K+N, Oxfam and Colruyt) and/or because they are substituted by less emitting vehicles, such as electric vehicles (DHL - electric vehicles tested only during two weeks of the demonstration; TNT), cargo bikes (TNT) or smaller vehicles (Oxfam). The potential reduction of CO2 and air polluting emissions in the scaled scenarios are greatest for the TNT and DHL solutions, because the scaled scenario of these solutions entail a significant increase in operational efficiency and, in the case of TNT, also a large increase in the geographic reach.
Business models and profitability
Within STRAIGHTSOL, we examined the business challenges for large-scale implementation using business model and business case analysis. We combined quantitative and qualitative methods to evaluate the business aspects of the demonstrations separately. Next, we generalized results into business concepts that are also useful for other urban-interurban contexts.
The combination of analyses enables drawing conclusions on the financial feasibility of the solutions. The solutions are either: not financially viable (i.e. a successful business model is not likely to be developed), financially viable for the initiator (i.e. a business model can be established without support from outside the own organisation), or desired, but complex to put successfully in the market. In case of the latter, the demonstrated solutions are beneficial for society as a whole. But even though total benefits outweigh total costs, there are various challenges that prevent the solutions from having a successful business model:
1. Costs and benefits are dispersed. Stakeholders that benefit are in many cases not the ones that have the ability/willingness to invest. To solve this, identification and redistribution mechanism for benefit/cost sharing should be developed. This requires additional time, knowledge, resources and costs. Another consequence it that, when benefits are dispersed it is difficult to develop a specific product or service for one customer that is willing to pay for it.
2. Benefits are difficult to quantify. Benefits are often not directly financial, such as, time savings, accessibility, comfort, attractiveness of (public) space, branding, air quality, etc. Stakeholders are often not able to value these benefits and weigh them with the costs (i.e. it is difficult – or even impossible – to put a price tag on these benefits).
3. Reluctance because of non-financial (and non-rational) reasons. In many cases, factors such as trust, competition, dependency and uncertainty, prevent stakeholders from changing their behaviour and hence, can hinder the market uptake of the solutions. Also, current agreements, rules and regulations can be obstacles. In line with this, certain missing regulations, (either supportive like time window exemptions, or restrictive like a congestion charge) could very much support the development of certain business models when they would be imposed.
Finally, it should be noted that the benefits have to be sufficiently high to compensate for risk and transaction costs while changing operations. What we have learned from the business analyses is that the above factors play a key role in whether or not successful business models can be established. These challenges should be identified and overcome first in order to make sure that future efforts are targeted effectively.
Multi-actor multi criteria analysis (MAMCA)
The MAMCA provides a step-by-step approach for a thorough evaluation of city distribution projects. Stakeholders’ preferences are taken into account in the evaluation at each stage of the decision process, thereby increasing the chances of success of any initiative. Not only business-as-usual and the demonstration were assessed, also various possible future scenarios were assessed to identify the parameters that determine whether a concept is appealing to a stakeholder or not.
One general conclusion that can be made is that we see that most tested concepts have a positive impact for the society as a whole, leading to a positive impact both for the citizens and the local authorities. The MAMCA confirms that it is very difficult to implement sustainable city logistics concepts, because they appear to be financially unviable. And even if there are scaled variations that are financially viable, the solution requires adapted behaviour of the main stakeholder which also is a major barrier for roll-out. Overall, the evaluations show that there is a big role to play by the (local) governments. All concepts are beneficial to society, especially when they are scaled. They require, however, too much initial investment of a private partner or cannot be operated in a profitable way. In that sense, the local government can play a crucial role in take-up of these concepts when they use their regulation power to support sustainable concepts.
The private actors focus on viability of investment and operational cost. All demonstrations were more expensive than business as usual, but some of them can be profitable under the right circumstances and with a sufficient scale of the operations. Private actors are not in favour of the demonstrated concepts unless they do not have to help paying the bill. On the other hand, local authorities tend to focus on the criteria that they have in common with the citizens and to consider their other criteria as less important. As a consequence, citizens and local authorities usually assess the different scenarios in the same way.
IV. Recommendations and challenges ahead
The STRAIGHTSOL project has supported demonstration of seven innovative urban freight transport solutions. For each of these we have described critical design choices for others who want to implement similar initiatives. Core questions that have to be addressed are for whom value is created, how the concept can be organised, whether supportive governance is required and expected financial consequences and distribution of these on different stakeholders.
The transferability of the demonstrated solutions to other contexts across the EU was also analysed. Transferability is defined as the ability to transfer and adopt successful measures from one city (donor city) to another (target or receptor city) achieving comparable results in the latter (Macário and Marques, 2008). Analysing the transferability of a measure or a policy requires a dedicated methodology. In the project the methodology that was followed was created based on the 10-step methodology used in the TURBLOG project (TURBLOG, 2011). From these results a roadmap to help decision makers to decide which measures to apply and when to apply them was developed. A city has to work with a broader perspective than what each of the STRAIGHTSOL solutions represents. The roadmap was based on the assumption that a key input for the Urban Mobility System (where the urban freight distribution system is embodied) is the interaction between policies, namely between land-use, environment and socio-economic development of the urban area. It also considered that inputs are not all equally controllable - some are under the control of the transport (or mobility) authorities and thus from their perspective are fully controllable, while others are not. In the implementation cycle of a roadmap, needs and problems should feed the setting of strategic objectives, which is largely dependent on techniques that lead the private agents to practices that will contribute to the desired impacts. Strategic objectives, in turn, should be the feeder of tactical objectives. Finally, operational objectives materialize outputs visible to the citizens, induced by the actions taken at strategic and tactical decision levels.
The evaluation of the solutions has shown that the solutions in general contribute to cities’ goals of reduced emissions, but it is challenging to establish profitable operations for the operator. A key question that follows from the STRAIGTHSOL experiences is thus how (local) authorities should go ahead to promote sustainable urban freight transport solutions in the future.
For several individual STRAIGHTSOL solutions it is possible to see specific public policies that would strengthen the profitability for the private operators. For instance, both the mobile depot solution of TNT Express and the alternative delivery times demonstrated by Colruyt & Delhaize would benefit from congestion charging. A low emission zone would probably also benefit the use of electric tricycles in the TNT case. The consolidation centre demonstrated by DHL Supply Chain in L’Hospitalet de LLobregat could also have benefited from similar policies. In this latter case, it is also apparent that a stronger involvement from local authorities could have improved the viability of the concept, for instance if more deliveries bound for municipal buildings were routed through the consolidation centre.
As pointed out by Mancur Olson (1965), public goods provided through collective actions creates problems with free riders who are not willing to contribute. This could call for design of selective incentives to those who actually contribute. London’s Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS) in one such example where companies may qualify for different certification levels and receive benefits corresponding to their level. Policies such as low emission zones or making congestion charges dependent on vehicle emission levels are also measures that promote sustainable operations.
Parts of the motivation of the demonstration of companies like TNT, Colruyt and Delhaize was to prepare for future policies like road pricing. This means that even if the demonstrations immediately have been transferred into permanent operations, the experiences from the demonstrations may be used as a basis for future implementations.
Many cities have developed or are in the process of developing strategic plans for urban freight transport. This reflects an increased awareness and it can be expected that the challenges of the urban transport system will be met by new policies during the next decade. The results of STRAIGHTSOL may serve as motivation for more stringent policies that promote sustainable urban freight transport solutions.
Potential Impact:
The STRAIGHTSOL project was set to promote more sustainable and efficient urban logistics as well as improved interfaces between urban and interurban transport. The evaluation of the demonstrated solutions has shown that uptake and roll/out of these solutions will contribute to reduced negative impacts, in particular local and global emissions. Together the solutions cover significant transport volumes in urban areas, and the potential socio-economic impact of the project is considerable. In order to maximise the exploitation of the project results and the potential impact, the project has put significant efforts into different dissemination activities.
A set of local workshops, one per demonstration, have been used as arenas for discussion of pros and cons of each demonstration, and to capture views of different stakeholders that have participated in or been affected by the demonstrations. The target groups of these workshops have been local stakeholders in each city, but also the general urban freight community.
Project workshops have been used for broader discussions of the demonstration concepts and the outcomes of the demonstrations. The audiences have been composed of representatives from industry, public sector, academics, organisations and utilities. We have in these cases also teamed up with other projects in the urban freight transport domain to widen the interests and the scope.
From the start of the project we have developed videos describing the main concepts of the demonstrations. Towards the end, we have also made two animations, one describing the demonstrations, and one describing the evaluation framework with the aim of making the information as readily accessible as possible also to a wider public. The animations and videos are accessible from the STRAIGHTSOL web site and the STRAIGHTSOL channel on Youtube.
The project has received valuable inputs from the six members of the expert panel European Reference Group, and this group has also served the project by spreading information on STRAIGHTSOL results in their local environments.
The consortium members have been active during external conferences and events, ranging from industrial events to scientific events and events emphasising policy making and public sector participants. Finally, a range of publications and articles have been devoted to disseminating project ideas and results, again ranging from trade journals and industry-oriented magazines to scientific journals and conference proceedings.
In terms of exploitation potential and impact of the STRAIGHTSOL project, four main directions should be highlighted:
I. Take-up of innovative and sustainable urban freight operations
The demonstrations are innovative and represent cutting-edge initiatives for smarter urban freight transport solutions. The companies and municipal agencies that have been involved in the project have taken different steps to build on the experiences from the project and further exploit the demonstrated solutions, and there is also a potential use by companies and municipal agencies outside the STRAIGHTSOL consortium.
DHL Supply Chain have been able to reduce transport costs due to increased consolidation potential identified during the pilot. This positive impact has provided a new scenario for setting and merging some routes near L´Hospitalet de Llobregat and the location of the Urban Consolidation Centre. The City Council are working on the “Municipal Plan for the improvement of the Air Quality”, which is a mandatory document required by Spanish legislation for all cities of more than 200 thousand inhabitants. The wtransnet webpage represents a potential that should be further explored, as this internet site permits sharing of information among logistics operators and fleet managers with a view to improving truck utilisation. DHL’s aim is to identify which suppliers could provide a reliable service within their supply chain outsourced services. Moreover, CENIT and the City Council of Barcelona are developing a transshipment centre with electric tricycles in the framework of the SMILE project from MED Programme. During the planning and implementation, the results and experience of L’Hospitalet were crucial.
For the TNT Express demonstration, the social cost benefit analysis (SCBA) and the multi actor multi-criteria analysis (MAMCA) revealed that the mobile depot (MD) concept can be improved in two directions. First of all, TNT Express can aim to further minimize the cost to operate the MD. A dense distribution network of parcel deliveries is a critical success factor, as well as the contract and cooperation with the subcontractor and the type of goods. Parcels should be easy to handle, as long as they are not too voluminous and not in need of special conditions. The second potential area of improvement is far-reaching support by the local authorities. The concept requires a suitable parking location for the MD right in the city centre where land prices usually are very high. Local authorities can provide support by making such a location available for free. Another supportive measure could be that authorities start internalising externalities. Within the MAMCA, this was simulated by the congestion charge scenarios. Today, TNT Express is looking for a suitable location with the right freight profile and drop density, and where zero emission transport is supported by the local government.
Although remote monitoring of banks has been discontinued by Oxfam due to vandalism and reliability issues, they liked the dynamic aspects of the vehicle routing used and they are currently investigating whether they can service their shops on a dynamic basis, based on their day-to-day collection needs. The University of Southampton will maintain contact with Oxfam key personnel to discuss further exploitation opportunities and contact will also be made with other charity organisations or local authorities using donation banks (e.g. those attending the Oxfam demonstration workshop, such as the Salvation Army). The University of Southampton will also continue to champion the remote monitoring concept through their association with Smartbin and there may also be scope to develop relationships with other sensor providers having a similar interest in the use of remote monitoring technology. Smartbin has expressed interest in exploiting the vehicle routing and scheduling algorithm that was developed by the University of Southampton for the Straightsol demonstration. An Excel spreadsheet version of the algorithm has been made freely available at: http://verolog.deis.unibo.it/vrp-spreadsheet-solver.
The University of Southampton are collaborating with Smartbin, for mutual benefit, by using remote monitoring data supplied by Smartbin for one of their clients (in the USA, waste oil sector) to investigate how the existing collections may be improved through the use of the methods developed in Straightsol.
For the Kuehne+Nagel demonstration, the experienced high costs of returning the GPS devices from Thessaloniki to Sopron is one of the greatest challenges. However, the Hellenic Railways (infrastructure, equipment and rolling stock provider) have already expressed their intention to test and use the demonstration’s GPS-based monitoring concept and incorporate it on condition that any communication and data transmission deficiencies are overcome. On the other hand, K+N have not decided on whether to charge the added value service (offset costs and guarantee viability of investment, but at the same time jeopardising the company’s attractiveness to existing and potential customers in tough economic environment) or not (putting the company ahead of competition at local, regional and national scale), but it is most likely that they will provide it free of charge to special customers, internalizing any involved costs, in order to promote it and attract a greater share of the freight transport market.
Stovner shopping centre was sold from Steen & Strøm to another actor after the GS1 Norway demonstration and the new owners have other plans for the centre, and no further activities will take place there. However, in a planned new shopping centre in Oslo, Steen & Strøm will develop the concept with use of buffer storage. The concept will in addition to delivery services be extended to include reverse logistics, waste management and other value added services. Steen & Strøm is already in contact with providers of buffer storage and single point stock receipt services. In addition to this, Steen & Strøm expressed in the local post-demonstration meeting in May 2014 that they also foresee to incorporate parts of the buffer storage concept in other existing centres. Steen & Strøm is Scandinavia’s leading shopping centre company, and they are also transferring experiences from the Emporia shopping centre in Sweden. Steen & Strøm is owned by the French shopping centre group Klépierre (56.1%) and the Dutch Pension Fund ABP (43.9%). During the mentioned post-demonstration meeting a shipper covering a range of retail chains expressed that they could be able to renegotiate transport agreements with logistics service providers to cover extra costs for buffer storage operations in shopping centres.
The motivation to start the EMEL demonstration was of a very practical nature, and it was already part of the initial plan to deploy the solution to the rest of the city as soon as some essential requirements were met. There are nearly 2000 spaces for loading and unloading activities all over the city, which will expectedly be covered, following the results of the demo. Also based on the results of the demo, the Lisbon Municipality held a public consultation on a new Municipal Regulation for On-Street Parking, which was approved and is now officially into force. This new regulation introduces the requirement for freight operations inside the city to be performed exclusively by registered vehicles. It also introduces new time rules: freight operations are allowed for up to two hours in dedicated loading and unloading bays, the first 30 minutes of which are exempted from payment and the remaining time is charged according to the on-street parking charges. EMEL is responsible for the enforcement of this regulation. Another requirement for spreading the solution is choosing the right technology, which was one of the main goals of the demo. However given the challenges associated with both technologies, EMEL has taken no decision towards the choice of one of them. Instead, it was decided to launch a tender for the development of a new technological solution for managing freight operations. Although it was decided not to use exactly the same technologies as those used on the demo, the specifications for this tender were done based also on the findings of the demo, namely those regarding the issues of verification of the parking space occupancy and the real-time communication with the control centre, and also the issues referred to in the risks and challenges identified above. The results of this first tender were technologically disappointing as no solid solution arose from it. EMEL is now redefining the steps to finding a new and satisfactory solution.
For the Colruyt and Delhaize demonstration, the SCBA and MAMCA analyses revealed that night deliveries have a potential in terms of financial and non-financial benefits, especially when implemented on a large scale. Avoiding congested traffic hours during the day saves energy and time. A more equal distribution of deliveries over 24 hours therefore directly reduces the operational expenses. Capital and human resource investments have to be made to get approval to deliver at night. But over time, these investments are (more than) compensated considering that the solution allows for a more efficient use of vehicles and distribution centre operations. There are also important benefits for society: The energy savings result in fewer emissions of pollutants and better air quality, and the decreased contribution to peak-hour traffic absorbs some of the traffic network congestion. The main prerequisite is, however, a permit/approval from the local authorities. Today, off-hour deliveries are often prohibited based on the noise nuisance they cause and approval is often arranged in terms of case-by-case exemptions. For the retailers it would be easier if permissions were granted based on a set of measures that have to be taken by both the retailer and his carrier, as the industry parties would then know in advance if it would pay off to invest or not.
II. A new evaluation framework for urban freight transport
The STRAIGHTSOL evaluation framework has been designed in a general way to make it applicable for any actor who wants to assess or consider new or alternative urban freight transport measures. The framework may be used by a local authority wanting to improve urban freight transport in its area, a private company considering other ways of working, or by consultants and researchers who want to contribute to a better understanding of the effects of any given measure in the urban freight transport domain. The motivation for developing a new evaluation framework was the general lack of systematic evaluation of measures, which hampers learning and knowledge transfer across cities and companies.
The evaluation framework comes with a training manual, and training courses have already been given to practitioners and other interested parties. An animation has been developed to explain the main concept in an easy way in order to reduce the barriers to exploring the framework.
III. Recommendations and advice for further implementation of sustainable solutions
The evaluation of the seven STRAIGHTSOL demonstrations has contributed to specific advice targeted towards companies interested in exploring solutions from the project (see also I. above) as well as municipalities with an aim to improve efficiency and reduce the negative impacts of urban freight transport. STRAIGHTSOL contributes to transferability and uptake of the demonstrated solutions with advice in terms of critical design factors, elaboration on possible ways to establish feasible business models, and guidance on how local authorities may promote sustainable urban freight transport solutions by supportive policies. The project has also assessed how alternative future conditions may affect the attractiveness of the seven solutions.
IV. Projects and initiatives building further on STRAIGHTSOL
Several national and European projects and initiatives have used experiences from STRAIGHTSOL and built further on results from the STRAIGHTSOL project.
The FP7 project FREVUE benefits from the evaluation framework developed in STRAIGHTSOL. Next, indicators are also used for the (further) development of the freight quality partnership in Rotterdam (i.e. GD010ZES).
The Norwegian research project Green Urban Distribution has benefited from the indicators of the STRAIGHTSOL evaluation framework. Also the project Green and Sustainable (GRASS), funded by the Polish-Norwegian research fund has incorporated experiences from STRAIGHTSOL.
Within the Belgian research project Night Deliveries in the Walloon Region, the STRAIGHTSOL evaluation framework was used to evaluate 5 pilot tests on off-hour deliveries in 5 different Belgian cities. The project was commissioned by the Government of the Walloon Region and resulted in policy recommendations.
Based on the K+N demonstration, the multi-criteria framework that was developed within STRAIGHTSOL contributed in shaping a targeted framework for the evaluation of the use of ICT in the supply chain operations focusing on their impact on the final transport leg. It was also investigated whether the use of diesel or LPG to a truck fleet similar to the one owned by K+N, would have positive impacts on the sustainability of urban operations. The result is that, based on the operational profile of the fleet, diesel trucks reach higher sustainability scores than LPG trucks.
Moreover, further analysis on the market uptake of ICT usage in supply chains was made, following an approach to investigate the stakeholders’ behaviour with and without the technological support of GPS systems and how their urban and interurban logistics operations are impacted.
Finally, a new cooperative scheme is being formulated with the cooperation of K+N and TRAINOSE regarding information exchange about cargo arrival on the railway and collection, distribution and further treatment by road. For this scheme, GPS data will be provided to the road operator, so that to build a seamless intermodal service for customers.
List of Websites:
www.straightsol.eu
Project Coordinator: Jardar Andersen, Institute of Transport Economics, Norway.
Address: Gaustadalléen 21, 0349 Oslo, NORWAY
Phone: +47 99700804
E-mail: jan@toi.no
