by Walther Ploos van Amstel
As an online groceries company, Picnic saw an enormous increase in demand during the start of the Corona crisis. Picnic’s systems suddenly experienced traffic peaks of up to 10 to 20 times the pre-Corona peak traffic. Even though they build their systems for scalability, surges like these exposed unknown challenges. In the Picnic blog, Picnic’s Sander Mak …
Trevor Hoyle, Senior VP of Ground Operations of FedEx, blogs about the COVID-19 pandemic and the permanent, profound changes for society. Attitudes towards home working have changed. Some businesses are moving towards 100% home working. The role of technology will be more dominant, as modern communications have shown what is possible despite physical social distancing.
The port of Amsterdam is in close connection with the city. Large quantities of goods are transported to and from the port by water on a daily basis. The livability and accessibility of the city are decreasing. That is why it is smart to transport goods such as construction materials over the canals.
Urban curb-space is a scarce resource that must satisfy the concurrent needs of an increasing number of users, including passenger, commercial, ride-hailing, and public transit vehicles. In particular, there is an increasing demand for curb-space for commercial vehicles to park, load/unload, and deliver goods as more people live in urban areas, order more things online, …
Urban deliveries are traditionally carried out with vans or trucks. These vehicles tend to face parking difficulties in dense urban areas, leading to traffic congestion. Smaller and nimbler vehicles by design, such as cargo-cycles, struggle to compete in distance range and carrying capacity. However, a system of cargo-cycles complemented with strategically located cargo-storing hubs can …
The domain of urban freight transport is becoming increasingly complex. Many urban supply chains are composed of small and independent actors that cannot efficiently organize their highly fragmented supply chains, thereby negatively affecting the quality of life in urban areas. Both companies and local administrators try to improve transport efficiency and reduce external costs, but …
The EU-funded CityChangerCargoBike project released key results of the first European Cargo Bike Industry Survey. These results are based on anonymized sales data provided by 38 cargo bike brands. After selling 17,800 cargo bikes in 2018 and 28,500 in 2019 the 38 survey participants expect to sell 43,600 cargo bikes across Europe in 2020.
An innovative walking and cycle-based system for optimized deliveries in city centers was launched in Dublin. Operating out of micro hubs and combining powered e-Walkers and e-Quad cycles, this model allows for last-mile deliveries that don’t add to local emissions or congestion, enabling a change in the way goods are delivered in busy city locations.
During the last few years, the number of LCVs has increased. With this increase, the challenges for last-mile urban operations are becoming crucial for many companies. Congestion, air quality concerns, low emission zones, and cost of the last mile are perhaps some of the main issues. However, all of these challenges represent real opportunities for OEMs. Arval …
Walther Ploos van Amstel, a professor in city logistics at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, looks back on the impact of COVID-19 on city logistics in Amsterdam. Total freight traffic went down 10 to 15 percent at the beginning of the lockdown, but in May 2020 was back at 2019 volumes. The major lesson learned during COVID-19: …