by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Brookings is reporting about where will online orders get fulfilled? The changing local geography of e-commerce. Brookings: “As the brick-to-bits transition continues, it’s not enough to just count job and output changes. It’s equally important to know where e-commerce jobs are emerging, especially as it relates to more traditional retail locations”.
IKEA Group will transition to electric vehicles (EVs) for last mile home deliveries in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, Paris and Shanghai by 2020. IKEA is one of the first companies to join The Climate Group’s EV100 corporate leadership initiative to accelerate the roll-out of electric transport.
Availability of loading and unloading zones is critical for reducing urban transport times and costs of last mile operations, improving planning, as well as for improving city sustainability, road safety, and livability.
Ducth PostNL will purchase e-bikes for all 18,000 mail deliverers. In this way, they can make longer postal rounds in the future. In urban areas with a lot of mail, it concerns electric cargo bikes, in quieter regions around normal e-bikes.
McKinsey presents an updated outlook for the last-mile delivery ecosystem, given the rapid development in technology. How will technological advances affect unit economics, customers, and competitive dynamics? McKinsey sees examples of technology piloting and testing across the globe. But they also see the beginning of series productions and scaling of technology deployment by several companies.
Truck traffic today is generating congestion and is responsible for a disproportionate share of transport externalities. For example, while trucks may only represent a small share of the traffic in urban areas, they generate more than half of overall emissions for specific contaminants.
We are seeing a growing body of research into last-mile logistics for delivery of products in cities. The growing congestion of cities and the explosion in e-commerce home delivery have challenged traditional last-mile logistics strategies that have focused on point-of-sale delivery. “In the city, shipments are typically much smaller and more fragmented than in regional transport,” …
Automated systems enabling customers to pick-up e-purchased goods from designated 24/7 Parcel Locker pickup points are proliferating. While they offer the promise of improved access to goods and reduced travel for consumers and delivery vehicles, the integration of these systems in cities, and their impact on access, generally and by mode are understudied.
A new report by the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme ‘Big data in Transport: Research opportunities, challenges, and limitations’ identifies and examines various societal and ethical issues that are relevant to the production of, access to, linking of and re-use of big data in the transport sector.
UPS has begun a pilot with Latch smart access devices to enable in-building deliveries to multi-unit homes in New York City, providing increased security and convenience for residents who are not at home to receive packages.