Land Efficient Mobility: Evaluation of Autonomous Last Mile Delivery Concepts in London

Maren Schnieder (), Chris Hinde and Andrew West
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Maren Schnieder: The Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
Chris Hinde: The Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK
Andrew West: The Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 16, 1-21

Abstract: Land efficient last mile delivery concepts are key to reducing the traffic in cities and to minimising its environmental impact. This paper proposes a decision support method that evaluates the autonomous delivery concept and applies it to one year’s worth of real parcel delivery data in London. Deliveries to modular and fixed lockers with autonomous delivery vans and road-based autonomous lockers (RAL) and sidewalk autonomous delivery robots (SADRs) have been simulated. Various types of autonomous delivery van fleets, depot locations, customer modes of transport, parcel demand levels, parcel locker network densities and adjustment frequencies of modular lockers are considered. A routing and scheduling algorithm is used to optimise delivery tours and vehicle choice. The optimisation algorithm finds both the optimal number of collection and delivery points (CDPs) and the delivery concept (e.g., modular lockers, sidewalk autonomous delivery robot) depending on the customer mode chosen. The results show that modular lockers which are adjusted weekly are the best option for the current or higher parcel demand levels and road-autonomous parcel lockers (RAL-R) are the best option at the lowest parcel demand level.

Keywords: time-area concept; space efficiency; land efficiency; last mile delivery; land consumption; autonomous delivery; parcel lockers; CDPs (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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