Sustainable urban logistics: Concepts, methods and

information systems
Jesus Gonzalez-Feliu, Jean-Louis Routhier, Frédéric Semet

To cite this version:

Jesus Gonzalez-Feliu, Jean-Louis Routhier, Frédéric Semet. Sustainable urban logistics: Concepts,
methods and information systems. Sustainable urban logistics: Concepts, methods and information
systems, Springer, pp.i-iii, 2014. ฀halshs-01056156฀

HAL Id: halshs-01056156

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01056156
Submitted on 16 Aug 2014

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est

archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents
entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non,
lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de
teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires
abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés.
Sustainable urban logistics: Concepts, methods and information
systems
Preface
Jesus Gonzalez-Feliu, Jean-Louis Routhier and Frédéric Semet

Urban logistics is a wide studied subject. Indeed, since more than twenty years, several
researchers and practitioners deal daily with different issues concerning planning and
management of urban freight transport systems. Nowadays, two definitions of city/urban
logistics are retained. The first is that of Taniguchi et al. [1] who define city logistics as « the
process for totally optimizing the logistics and transport activities by private companies in
urban areas while considering the traffic environment, the traffic congestion and energy
consumption within the framework of a market economy ». The second, more related to the
vision of Ambrosini and Routhier [2] and Anderson et al. [3], is not related to the notion of
optimization but to organization. In this sense, we can define urban logistics as the
pluridisciplinary field that aims to understand, study and analyze the different organizations,
logistics schemes, stakeholders and planning actions related to the improvement of the
different goods transport systems in an urban zone and link them in a synergic way to
decrease the main nuisances related to it. Although the field has been studied for almost 40
years, it is only at the end of the XXth century that we observe the main coordinated actions of
research having a direct impact into practice.

Nowadays, we can observe thousands of specific actions in urban logistics, many directly
issued from research programs, but not all of them are still operational. This is mainly due to
the different stakeholders that are seen in urban logistics, as well as the wide variety of aims
and stakes and to the consequent difficulties to pursuit collaborative actions. Public
stakeholders (politicians, city planners, public transport managers, regional or national
technical services) are on a collective welfare vision and aim to reduce the main nuisance
attributed to freight transport, i.e. congestion, pollution, global warming and noise without
penalizing urban areas and also while creating employment when possible. Private
stakeholders (shippers, transport and logistics operators, retailers, wholesalers, craftsmen, real
state stakeholders, tertiary activities, etc.) are on an economic efficiency vision and aim to
reduce costs and/or increase service quality, of course with an eye on the environment but not
as a primordial criterion. It is clear that for each stakeholder the notion of sustainability is not
the same. Although all of them refer to the Kyoto protocol, the importance that they give to
each of its components (economic, environmental and social) is not the same, and it is often
difficult to provide a unified vision to compare proposals and solutions. Furthermore, those
issues are amplified due to the high constrained environment of urban goods transport and the
interaction that it makes with personal transport (although goods transport is often indicated
as source of nuisance, it is proven that its inefficiency is a consequence of the nuisances
personal transport have on goods transport).

In this context we think important to make the links between research and practice, and
provide a general framework to help both public and private stakeholders in managing and
planning urban logistics systems. This book aims to provide both a conceptual framework for
urban logistics planning and management and to create a basis for deploying solutions that
aim to reduce the main nuisances related to urban goods. In addition to public authorities’
aims and goals, the book highlights the importance of private actors, and shows how supply
chain management can deal with the problems of the last urban mile and its integration in
global logistics chains.

The book is divided in four parts. The first aims to describe and set the current situation, not
only on the (historical) viewpoint of city planners but also on that of sustainable managers.
The second part proposes a set of methodological chapters, written by key authors, which aim
to support decision makers in terms of understanding and simulating the current situation in
terms of urban goods flows. The third part is more related to tactical planning actions,
including both public and private viewpoints. The fourth part is focused on strategic planning
issues, also on both viewpoints.

The first part is composed on four chapters, two related to the links of urban logistics with
supply chain management, and two focused on the relations between local governance and
logistics development.

In the first chapter [5], Daniel Boudouin, Christian Morel and Mathieu Gardrat present the
main links between supply chain management and urban logistics, focusing on the natural
interfaces between both of them: urban logistics platforms. Those links are presented from
public and private sector viewpoints. A typology of urban logistics platforms is proposed,
based on the structure of present and hypothetical future demand in terms of urban goods
movements. Finally, the authors formulate several recommendations on new forms of
organizations, technologies and governance.

If the first chapter focuses on urban logistics to see the links to global supply chain
management (bottom-up), the second one has a top-down approach [6]. Joëlle Morana
presents the main concepts of sustainable supply chain management and applies them to urban
logistics. In this chapter, the links are not physical but organizational, and are more related to
private stakeholders. The place of urban goods transport in a sustainable supply chain
management process is shown, and illustrated via the example of the urban consolidation
center of Padova (Italy). This example illustrates the need of collaboration among both private
and public stakeholders and the importance of a sustainable thinking which do not focuses
only on environmental hopes but also on economic and social facts.

The third chapter adopts clearly a public planner’s perspective [7]. Erica Ballantyne and
Maria Lindholm show, via an interview-based study, the issues related to including the
identification of goods transport demand needs into urban plans. The authors present the
similarities in the way that local authorities from Sweden, the UK, and Baltic Sea Region
countries perceive urban freight problems, and discuss the relationships between local
authorities and freight stakeholders. The main findings show that local authorities have begun
to acknowledge freight transport more often but the issues faced by the freight industry are
still not fully understood. Finally, they highlight the potential benefits of including freight
stakeholders in the transport planning process, encouraging more meaningful discussions with
key freight stakeholders at an early stage in the transport planning process.

Laetitia Dablanc shows in chapter 4, via a case study on the Los Angeles mega-region, the
main stakes and issues of North American authorities in terms of logistics needs and platform
location and development [8]. Moreover, an in-depth analysis of the logistics sprawl
phenomena in Los Angeles allows the author to focus on the links between local governance
and logistics activities deployment, especially for the jobs and tax revenues they can generate
in a time of economic difficulties. She examines two cases in Los Angeles: the first is a
traditionally industrial city close to downtown; the second is the sprawling community of the
“Inland Empire,” east of the L.A. metropolitan area. In both cases, the author observes the
influence that the warehousing/logistics industry has on the economic life of working class
areas, raising questions about the pros and cons of logistics activities for local communities.

The second part is centered on data production, more precisely on the methods that allow
surveying, collecting, processing and/or reconstructing the information which can be needed
to define and understand the current situation in terms of urban goods flows. It contains three
chapters. Chapters 5 and 6 are related on survey and data collection methods, and chapter 7 on
statistical methods for estimating data from current databases.

Julian Allen, Christian Ambrosini, Michale Browne, Daniele Patier, Jean-Louis Routhier and
Alan Woodburn propose a wide review of survey methods that have been carried in Europe,
based on the conclusions of the BESTUFS II project [9]. From survey work carried out with
experts in eleven European countries, a comparison of urban freight transport data collection
efforts is made to better understand what currently takes place and to identify examples of
good practice. Authors observe that the extent of urban freight data collection varies
significantly between the European countries, as existing urban freight data comes mainly
from the disaggregation of national survey results. Finally, authors identify a set of gaps in
data collection, as well as the need for greater standardization in data collection methods and
in analysis and reporting of this data.

The same subject is studied by José Holguin-Veras and Miguel Jaller, who analyse
characteristics and unique features of the freight system, focusing on data requirements of
different modeling techniques [10]. Although both chapters refer to data collection, authors
here focus on modeling and estimation, and study the roles of various data collection
procedures. The analyses produce a set of findings of relevance to the design of
comprehensive freight data collection frameworks for mid-size and large urban areas like
those that can be seen in North America. From those findings, authors propose a modular data
collection framework to support urban stakeholders’ decisions concerning data collection
methods depending on their needs and constraints.

Jesus Gonzalez-Feliu, Christian Ambrosini, Florence Toilier and Jean-Louis Routhier propose
in chapter 7 a statistical-based modeling approach to propose a data estimation tool that can
be transposed to different cities, avoiding the needs of making very costly surveys . The
proposed framework needs standard inputs able to be obtained by public authorities and/or
private stakeholders to make a diagnosis of urban logistics in current situations. The joint
process of collecting data and modeling is described, and the different modules of the
framework are presented. The authors conclude by presenting the main applications and
further developments.

The third part deals with tactical planning. In other words, chapters of this part propose
different methods to support stakeholders in middle-term decisions (Crainic and Laporte,
1997), i.e., at a monthly-weekly horizon. Two main subjects are studied: consolidation and
time constraints.
In chapter 8, Simona Mancini, Jesus Gonzalez-Feliu and Teodor Gabriel Crainic focus on
combinatorial optimization, more precisely on vehicle routing problems [12]. The authors
focus on methods related to advanced consolidation systems. The authors present the main
categories of systems related to consolidation, and relate to each category a group of
problems. Then they focus on optimization methods, presenting the main variants and making
a critical discussion of its suitability. Finally, the authors propose a socio-economic analysis
to study the leverages and limits of urban consolidation systems, based on a set of interviews.

Jesus Munuzuri and Ron Van Duin deal with the issue of access time windows [13]. First, the
authors motivate the importance of access times policies, and present a panorama of Dutch
cities. After that, the authors present and apply a VRP-based methodology to estimate these
costs, which should be brought into the overall cost-benefit analysis of urban time constraint
policies. The main notions of vehicle routing optimization with access time windows are
presented, and a genetic algorithm is presented. Finally, an example of application is shown as
illustration.

Finally, the last part of the book focuses on strategic planning and assessment. Chapter 10 is
related to the notion of logistics pooling, which can be seen as an alternative to classical urban
consolidation tactics [14]. Authors propose a framework for strategic planning and ex-ante
evaluation of logistics pooling systems. First, the authors present the main concepts of
logistics pooling and their applications to urban delivery services. Then, an information
systems-based framework for planning and evaluation is described, from which a set of
indicators are identified. To illustrate this framework, the authors present a case study from a
French urban logistics pooling system.

Agostino Nuzzolo and Antonio Comi propose in chapter 11 a framework to forecast the direct
effects of urban logistics measures [15]. Such effects can be internal (transportation cost
variations) or external (variations of pollution, noise and road accidents). First the authors
consider the shopping and restocking components of urban freight mobility and the relative
actor’s choices that can be influenced by city logistics measures. After that they consider the
road system with its various components, and the demand models are analyzed with particular
attention to shopping demand models. The model is calibrated and the possible applications
are enounced.

Edoardo Marcucci and Valerio Gatta lead with the heterogeneity in retailers’ choices
concerning the acceptability of urban logistics measures. The authors report the result of a
stated ranking exercise conducted in the Limited Traffic Zone of Rome (Italy) in 2009
focusing on retailers and their acceptability to pay for different measures concerning urban
deliveries [16]. The authors make a comparison between two model specifications and study
the non-linear effects for the variations of the levels of the attributes considered. The results
obtained are very interesting and meaningful from a policy perspective since they show
potentially differentiated effects of the policy implemented in deep contrast with the, often
assumed, homogenous effect hypothesis.

Finally, Jesus Gonzalez-Feliu, Eiichi Taniguchi and Bruno Faivre-d’Arcier propose an

overview on one important but little studied issue in urban logistics: that of financing and/or
refunding urban logistics solutions [17]. After presenting the main refunding strategies in
urban economics and relating them to urban logistics, the authors propose to analyze the
potential of cost benefit analysis in urban logistics. The general method and an application to
the deployment of delivery space booking systems are proposed, and results discussed.
Finally, authors list the main fields where public-private partnerships can be applied and
identify the main refunding issues related to them.

With that plethora of approaches, proposed by key authors, this book aims to give readers a
basis for understanding, planning and managing urban logistics systems with the respect of
the sustainability development conditions, allowing a wide variety of stakeholders a unified
and pluridisciplinary overview of the main subjects concerning sustainable urban logistics.

References
[1] Taniguchi, E., Thompson, R. G., Yamada, T., & Van Duin, R. (2001). City Logistics-
Network modelling and Intellegent Transport Systems, Amsterdam: Pergamon.
[2] Ambrosini, C., & Routhier, J. L. (2004). Objectives, methods and results of surveys
carried out in the field of urban freight transport: an international comparison. Transport
Reviews, 24(1), 57-77.
[3] Anderson, S., Allen, J., & Browne, M. (2005). Urban logistics––how can it meet policy
makers’ sustainability objectives? Journal of Transport Geography, 13(1), 71-81.
[4] Crainic, T. G., & Laporte, G. (1997). Planning models for freight transportation.
European Journal of Operational Research, 97(3), 409-438.
[5] Boudouin, D., Morel, C., & Gardrat, M. (2014). Supply chains and urban logistics
platforms. In Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems
(pp. 1-20). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[6] Morana, J. (2014). Sustainable Supply Chain Management in Urban Logistics. In
Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems (pp. 21-35).
Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[7] Ballantyne, E. E., & Lindholm, M. (2014). Identifying the need for freight to be
included in local authority transport planning. In Sustainable Urban Logistics:
Concepts, Methods and Information Systems (pp. 37-48). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[8] Dablanc, L. (2014). Logistics Sprawl and Urban Freight Planning Issues in a Major
Gateway City. In Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information
Systems (pp. 49-69). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[9] Allen, J., Ambrosini, C., Browne, M., Patier, D., Routhier, J. L., & Woodburn, A.
(2014). Data Collection for Understanding Urban Goods Movement. In Sustainable
Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems (pp. 71-89). Springer
Berlin Heidelberg.
[10] Holguín-Veras, J., & Jaller, M. (2014). Comprehensive freight demand data collection
framework for large urban areas. In Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods
and Information Systems (pp. 91-112). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[11] Gonzalez-Feliu, J., Toilier, F., Ambrosini, C., & Routhier, J. L. (2014). Estimated Data
Production for Urban Goods Transport Diagnosis. In Sustainable Urban Logistics:
Concepts, Methods and Information Systems (pp. 113-143). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[12] Mancini, S., Gonzalez-Feliu, J., & Crainic, T. G. (2014). Planning and Optimization
Methods for Advanced Urban Logistics Systems at Tactical Level. In Sustainable
Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems (pp. 145-164). Springer
Berlin Heidelberg.
[13] Muñuzuri, J., & van Duin, J. H. R. (2014). Time constraints: the cost of sustainability.
In Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems (pp. 165-
185). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[14] Morana, J., Gonzalez-Feliu, J., & Semet, F. (2014). Urban Consolidation and Logistics
Pooling. In Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems
(pp. 187-210). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[15] Nuzzolo, A., & Comi, A. (2014). Direct Effects of City Logistics Measures and Urban
Freight Demand Models. In Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and
Information Systems (pp. 211-226). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[16] Marcucci, E., & Gatta, V. (2014). Behavioral Modeling of Urban Freight Transport. In
Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems (pp. 227-
243). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
[17] Gonzalez-Feliu, J., Taniguchi, E., & d’Arcier, B. F. (2014). Financing Urban Logistics
Projects. In Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems
(pp. 245-265). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.