Abstract
Crowdsourced deliveries or crowdshipping is identified in recent literature as an emerging urban freight transport solution, aiming at reducing delivery costs, congestion, and environmental impacts. By leveraging the pervasive use of mobile technology, crowdshipping is an emerging solution of the sharing economy in the transport domain, as parcels are delivered by commuters rather than corporations. The objective of this research is to evaluate the impacts of crowdshipping through alternative scenarios that consider various levels of demand and adoption by public transport users who act as crowdshippers, based on a case study example in the city of Volos, Greece. This is achieved through the establishment of a tailored evaluation framework and a city-scale urban freight traffic microsimulation model. Results show that crowdshipping has the potential to mitigate last-mile delivery impacts and effectively contribute to improving the system’s performance.
Highlights
Every year actions are initiated to promote sustainable urban freight transportation (UFT), with great interest in pioneering initiatives that enable the participation of citizens [1]
The concept of crowdshipping as a commercial business model is based on a platform provided by a company through which last-mile delivery is performed by commuters, and not corporations [4]
This study examines the use of public transportation (PT) for the deployment of crowdshipping services, along with smart locker installations which will be strategically positioned in areas with high demand, to allow final recipients to receive their parcels with flexibility and at low cost as compared to home deliveries
Summary
Every year actions are initiated to promote sustainable urban freight transportation (UFT), with great interest in pioneering initiatives that enable the participation of citizens [1]. These initiatives aim at addressing the recognizable threats of urban unsustainability i.e., urbanization, aging population, globalization, etc., focusing on the rapid growth of e-commerce and the high service expectations for fast and flexible deliveries [2]. The success of the solution depends upon the incentives that will be given to crowdshippers or the length of the detour to perform a delivery [7]. Requests on popular crowdshipping platforms may result in generating dedicated new delivery trips rather than modifying existing ones (rebound effect) [10]
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