Simulation-based Assessment of Cargo Bicycle and Pick-up Point in Urban Parcel Delivery

Abstract

Urban parcel delivery has become the bottleneck of E-commerce. This bottleneck is not only created by the cost of delivering parcels, but also caused by the difficulty to realize faster and more flexible but precise deliveries in an unreliable and dynamic environment. The questions arise how to relieve the pressure caused by last mile delivery from the logistics companies, and from the traffic and environmental system. This article intends to answer the question, whether a shift to (i) a bicycle-based last mile distribution or (ii) the use of pickup-points is desirable from a societal point of view. We study these measures exemplarily for the case of Berlin. Simulation models represent the spatial structure of the city (network, spatial disparities) and the temporal characteristics of traffic flows. Two measures are addressed by two simulation case studies: delivering on the last mile by cargo bicycles and rerouting of parcels to pick-up points. We show that the last mile by cargo bicycles is suited to reduce the delivery cost; it also has positive impact on the environment. In the case of the pickup points, the additional trips of private customers to these points largely exhaust the benefits from the saved mileage of the delivery vehicles. The present research also critically examines that the micro simulation models are possible to assess the net effects of such innovations once they are applied on a large scale.