Research Paper #4:

Direct Impacts of off-hour deliveries on urban freight emissions – Transport

Research Part D

This research paper highlights the problem of rising urban freight emissions during
regular hour deliveries (RHD) and poses a solution that reduces possible emissions
and positively impacts economic relations. Since, the transportation sector is one of
the most important segments in an economy it is also important to note the trucking
industry results in a rise in environmental pollution and their participation in the rise
of congestion. It also adversely effects by reducing productivity due to traffic while
RHD which equally harms the economies.
The potentially innovative solution from the Freight Demand Management (FDM) that
can be implemented in such situations are introducing the “Off-Hour Deliveries” or
OHD services. The FDM recognizes that the generators of the freight demand or the
receivers are the main reason why RHD has been popularized. Since these
receivers dictate the time of delivery it is important to implement policies to regulate
the freight demand. By introducing OHD the emission reductions are promising and it
imposes a sustainable impact on the freight activity.
OHD was particularly a successful strategy since it provided incentives to the
receiver, the shippers and the carriers. The carriers were incentivized by the cost
savings which mainly attracted support from the private sector. OHD could lead to
reduction in urban daytime congestion, superior reliability of deliveries, lower
shipping costs, increased productivity of delivery options and reduced environmental
pollutions. The receivers were pleased by this business inertia or shift to OHD routes
by giving financial incentives, shipping discounts and public recognition.
To support the study, some experiments were done in 3 different cities – New York
City, USA; Bogotá, Columbia and São Paulo, Brazil. The OHD program was divided
into 2 categories – Full OHD that is 7PM to 6AM and Partial OHD that is 6PM to
10PM. The Full OHD experiments have shown a significantly positive impact in
metropolitan cities with a population of more than 2 to 15 million people by reducing
congestion in daytime and emission of harmful gases like CO 2. The experiment
shows a fall in GHG’s and other pollutants by 13-67% with the OHD routes.

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The adoption of OHD would also lead to a more efficient and productive supply
chain, the travelling time has significantly reduced in the OHD programs which
ensures prompt and safe deliveries. Almost 35% of cost savings were noticed in the
studied cities since it has a 28–53% impact on the logistic costs. The importance of
these FDM programs can be illustrated through the success attained in the larger
cities like New York but it can only be adopted if the private and public sectors work
together and the receivers are properly incentivized by these programs. There are
significant limitations to this program but the positives overshadow these like
reduction of delivery routes and engaging in delivering more costumers at once.
Therefore, many developing or developed countries have started using OHD and
seen a significant reduction in GHG emissions, environmental pollution and
congestions, also have uplifted the local communities and helped small businesses
immensely.

Research Paper #5:

Assessing the sustainability of mobile depots: The case of urban freight

distribution in Rio de Janeiro – Transportation Research Part D

The transport industry has come a long way with every advancement of technology
but not all have been proven to be sustainable in changing environments. Its
expansion has come across to be difficult and costly. But when we look at the
current situation where the traditional delivery system accumulates into higher
congestion, rise in emission of pollutants and traffic and restraining policies on
certain sizes of truck. The study implements a multi-tier system that could track the
economic and environmental impacts with the use of trucks and tricycles for delivery
in densely populated areas and bases this experiment in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.
The study introduced a new “last-mile” delivery platform, in this research paper
focuses on an experiment with an alternative to the truck-based delivery, which is,
the mobile-depot-based delivery. In this alternative, they device micro
consolidated/de-consolidated centers in the inner city core to enable the product
transfer from the truck to the tricycle/motorcycle. This type of transfer is costly and
risky but requires minimum infrastructure since the truck that is being used is from a

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transport company is parked and the tricycles that are owned by the shipper are the
cargos delivering the actual product.
Many cities with dense population imposed restrictions on big trucks and sometimes
the trucks could not pass through narrowed streets in such areas. Therefore, the
mobile-depot based delivery seemed a viable option. It also positively impacted
traffic congestion and reduced harmful emissions by a significant amount. The time
taken to deliver by both the traditional and alternative modes is almost the same but
the latter proves to be risky due to higher product handling and the transferring
seems to be very time consuming as done manually. If economically seen the
Mobile-depot-based delivery setup (truck + tricycle) is expected to be more
expensive than the traditional model since the tricycle travels back and forth to
collect the products and delivers it to the consumers in a densely populated area is
effectively higher. In the study, areas with small, traditional retail outlets the
alternative model seems to work as a less costly option but in areas with high
population the truck deliveries seem time and cost effective. But if the retail channel
is more fragmented the operational cost seems advantageous, moreover the
alternative supports the emission reductions of GHG and atmospheric pollutants.
The results of the study addresses the gap of knowledge and awareness required for
public and private authorities to jointly enable sustainable delivery practices.
Therefore, the comparisons of traditional model and mobile-depot-based delivery
model of the basis of economic, environmental and time and distance shows that the
latter has a cost advantage with the increase in the expected drop size, it reduces
emissions significantly compared to the former model and the time and distance
travelled is nearly as same as the traditional model. Hence, the analysis concluded
by proving the cost effectiveness of the alternative in places with the traditional
nanostores, it also has access to areas with regulatory restrictions on large trucks.

Research Paper #6:

A Framework to evaluate policy options for supporting electric vehicles in

urban freight transport - Transportation Research part D