 COMMEATOR MESSAGERIE & VILLE POST-CARBONEPatrice Salini,
Sandrine Vanel and
Antoine Artous
Working Papers from HAL Abstract: Parcel Services and Urban Logistics Our research deals with the future of parcel services (at a large extent) within the green urban logistics and related to scenarios resting upon "post-carbone cities". The parcel services design first of all activities of freight collection, groupage and distribution of parcels and / or pallets in a quick timeframe even express. This operating system may be found (at least partially) within other urban distribution models resting upon a network structuration based upon the implementation of depots ; especially within the pharmaceutic distribution model or with the networks of pallets distribution developed next to the "pure" parcel services. Our approach focusses on the French parcel service market (parcel services, express) including however the mail delivery service (Coliposte), which is the major operator for the parcel distribution and owning on the one hand a wide network of specialized platforms and on the other hand, within the cities, a specific distribution model. This operating model based upon networks structures largely the business related to parcel services and distribution, favouring indeed oligopolistic situations and conditioning the efficiency of the collection and distribution haulages. The own account represents 55% of the freight urban transportation and commercial transportation 45%. LET (Freturb simulation) estimates that parcel services (at the large extent) reach 38% of the urban freight transport flows. Our hypothesis is to consider the sector structuration to reflect concretely onto the organization of the collection and distribution tours and, at long term, onto the evolution of this crucial element of the urban freight transportation enabling only to few major operators to serve the French agglomerations, the more since some large networks are still developing politics of green urban distribution, of which ELU (Urban Logistics Area) experimentations. Transport tours, conditions of urban mobility and productivity Our analysis confirms this state of the art but the relative weight of the parcel service flows within the economic schemes of the cities does not impact significantly the conditions of the urban mobility. It is in fact basically secondary and depends generally of global mobility restrictions. The stakes in number of transport tours are indeed weak. According to INSEE, the urban poles account 60,2% of the French population, of which 27,7% are located within the "city centers" and 32,5% within the suburbs. Daily, according to our estimates (c.f. research report), the urban tours for parcel (pallets) services account 7.500, of which 5.800 (292.000 km) for the sole "city centers". As regards the express and the parcel services, these figures are respectively 12.600 and 6.300 (126.000 km). Furthermore, despite difficult mobility and parking conditions, the urban tours, thanks to the density of the delivery / collection points have not weaker productivities than in suburb and ever less than in rural areas (except within historical city centers particularly difficultly accessible). The authorized gauge of vehicles and the delivery timeframes are actually more structuring than other factors. It appears that the transport tours are globally optimized and a weak productivity reserve, except by multiplication of massive delivery points (e.g. Point Relais) and thus enhancing even more the sector oligopolistic situation. Our feeling is that the diversities of the conditions of areas servicing between cities and intra-agglomerations result from a high factors' combination, impacting sometimes on the converse of the expected situation. We notice for instance productivities (in number of delivered points per tour) in the city centers servicing which can double as those indeed of the suburb servicing. The efficiency levels vary obviously according to the customer profiles, the services and the diversity of the parcel number treated per point ; largely influenced by the B-to-C compared to B-to-B. However, globally, the parcel service model appears basically homogeneous, structured by operating ratios comparable to the « global » model of a given business. ELU, unloadings and green distribution Within this context, it is important to distinguish different levels of discussions. An important part of the present problems rests upon the management and the rationalization of the urban transport flows of passengers as well goods, with an under-estimate of the position to give to the freight problematic ; e.g. a city located in the middle France having implemented a tramway network to serve its major streets "forgetting" to preserve parking places for delivery operations. Even if these practices get a decisive dimension, they are not the central subject of our research which deals with the "zero-carbone" emission distribution and at first glance, in the present conditions, with the development of electrical vehicles. Lot of literature is indeed available on this subject as related to the development of the ELU generating additional unloadings. And that is clearly the state of the art for the servicing of Paris intra-muros because step-by-step the Parisian platforms have been exported to the suburbs, hence the obligation to organize one, and even two, unloadings in order to enable a final servicing with electrical vehicles, using sometimes specialized sub-contractors. Within this framework, the distribution network is rationalized enabling sometimes to generate productivity gains resting upon, at least for BtoC, structures as "point relais". However, this operating system may only be duplicated in few large metropolis, especially taking into account the different urban geography. Generally, based upon the present energetic autonomy of the electric vehicles, an unloading is necessary when servicing a urban diameter exceeding 30 km. But the green delivery may be direct. In this case the ELU models appears more as rationalization tools to serve areas with difficult accessibility (as in the old centers) or enabling "on foot" servicing than as mutualization tools consecutive to the necessity of an additional unloading. Prospectives A prospective reflection can be oriented through two different questions : 1.First, a question related to the change of the demand which influences the flow volume, its structure (parcel share) and its operating consequences ; e.g. the share of the "relais colis" for the BtoC servicing. That is an exogenous variable for us because our reflection is positioned within the present major trends of development of the urban consumption. 2.Secondly, a question relative to the offer and the operating conditions of the tours within its double dimension : organizational and technical. This second dimension stays at the center of our analysis. The eventual revolution of the servicing networks may be considered. Indeed, to avoid CO² and congestion problematics, innovative concepts can be imagined as the "foodtubes" studied by English researchers or the enhancement of old systems based upon pneumatic networks, the technology in addition. Expensive however these solutions are realistic for us only for megalopolis or very large agglomerations. But, with the state of the art, other solutions related to present trends may be considered based upon the operating with zero-emission vehicles or upon a different organization of the distribution generating additional unloadings. This last case, however, answers to a present necessity only within very large agglomerations and may be an advantage for the servicing of some areas with difficult accessibility for "standard" vehicles (in terms of gauge). That necessitates a partial re-organization of the urban distribution problematics : operators specialized in the green distribution, "point relais", delivery on foot… We can roughly estimate that less than fifty percent of the 60% of the population located within the urban zone is concerned, that means 25% of the total population and daily 700.000 parcels and 6.000 tours. The forms taken by this re-organization depend, partially, upon the transport politics but which are not our research area. Nevertheless, the land reserve put at disposal constitutes a decisive element. More generally the increase (probably at short term) of the energetic autonomy of the zero-emission vehicles might enable a "natural" transition generating a systematic use of them. Stays however the cost obstacle : today the electric vehicle price is even 30 to 40% higher to purchase…. But, it may decrease. Finally, to conclude on the CO², if we can estimate the emissions of the global parcel services system to about less than 1,5 million tons yearly, the urban and peri-urban emissions appear to amount about more than 50% of them. But the stake for the city centers is, from our point of view, modest related to these emissions (with about more than 100.000 tons yearly). In fact, the stakes for this market segment are relatively weak. The share of parcel services seems indeed to amount globally little more than 1% (that is about less than 3% of the truck and low weight vehicles emissions in France). The urban parcel services represent thus about 1,5% of the emissions generated by the freight transport vehicles. Keywords: Messagerie; Fret Express; Livraisons urbaines; Distribution; Post-Carbone; Co2 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Published in Predit. 2011 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05676572 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from HAL |
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