The FTC2050 project aimed to identify and evaluate urban freight logistics initiatives that may have the greatest impact on reducing fuel consumption and energy requirements.
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A fundamental ambition of the FTC2050 project was to investigate the potential impact of carriers working together to reduce their combined carbon footprint.
The FTC2050 project investigated the use of porters for the ‘last-200m’ delivery of parcels, reducing the need for vans by decoupling the motorised transport from the delivery.
Retailers, couriers and customers can reduce the carbon footprint of deliveries by adopting greener delivery strategies
The practical application and policy impact of the FTC2050 project
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Fast, Green & Free Deliveries – Overcoming the last mile challenge in urban transport University of Liverpool in London, 25 June 2019
One retailer-led initiative by Sainsbury’s, Ocado and some other online retailers is to offer their customers ‘green delivery time slots’ where they have a delivery booked in the same area at the same time, which, if selected by the customer, would allow a more efficient vehicle schedule to be organised.
Similarly, A2B couriers such as CitySprint may be able to operate more efficiently by adopting a ‘holding off’ or waiting strategy before assigning deliveries to vehicles with the hope of being able to combine deliveries. The FTC2050 project and CitySprint supported the investigation of such strategies through a co-organised hackathon event and the following University of Southampton final-year student project.
Masters of Engineering, Group Design Project, 2018, University of Southampton
Alexandre Beardshall, Kenneth Whelan, Eugene Ang Xi Run, Indraneel Gunturi, Charalambia Solomou, Bryce Gilson
Temporal trends in consumer behaviour and geographical hotspots for CitySprint deliveries were identified and broken down across fast-food, healthcare and general delivery sectors. Key pairs of pickup and delivery areas were identified to investigate the possibility of consolidating deliveries by adopting a green delivery waiting strategy to improve CitySprint’s delivery capability, customer satisfaction and brand perception, whilst reducing running costs and environmental impact. Waiting times ranging between one hour and five hours were considered. It was found that travel distance and time savings plateaued at 6% and 8%, respectively, and that waiting two hours was sufficient, as waiting longer did not give any significant further savings. Customers could perhaps be persuaded to opt for green delivery by offering ‘green credits’ with CitySprint, redeemable on future green deliveries.
For fast-food deliveries and other urgent deliveries not suited to consolidation, it may be possible to pre-emptively place couriers in identified hotspots of activity. This could: reduce overall distance travelled by couriers as they travel less to reach pick-up points; reduce time spent per item and therefore increase the number of jobs and money they can earn; reduce fuel consumption and related CO2 emissions.