A Dynamic Roadmap for City Logistics

Abstract

The local governments in the Netherlands experience a problem. The distribution of freight in the cities is an important driver of the economy, but it has negative impacts on the liveability of their cities, which affects the attractiveness of a municipality. However, changing the city logistics is not straightforward. Shippers, carriers, city hubs, retailers, consumers and residents all have different objectives and other concerns. Shippers for example, want to meet the expectations of the consumers. The consumers want same-day delivery, deliveries on Sundays, just-in-time, sustainable and affordable services. The challenge of the logistic sector is to increase the logistic operations with less vehicle movements and a decrease of emissions. In order to achieve this challenge, governments, logistic operators and research institutes signed a covenant, named the Green Deal Zero Emission Stadslogistiek. In this covenant the parties agree to realize zero emission in city logistics in 2025. But in the Green Deal only the ambitions are recorded and not a strategic plan to achieve the ambitions. It results that, despite the Green Deal ZES, people from different parts of the business fail to take appropriate action. Due to a lack of targets in the covenant stakeholders cannot be judged on their behaviour and progress. Since a strategic planning is missing, stakeholders experience little responsibility to take action. The objective of this research is to deliver a dynamic roadmap for the coming decade that strategic planners can use. This map of pathways should help the strategic planners of city logistics to make a plan, taken future uncertainties into account. To meet this objective, insight is needed in how the good intentions of the stakeholders of city logistics in the Netherlands can be converted to a robust roadmap for the next decade, aiming for an improvement of urban logistics. The research tries to improve the success of the Green Deal Zero Emission Stadslogistiek. Especially the robustness of the roadmap is relevant, since it should be capable of dealing with setbacks and delays of actions. In order to deliver a strategic planning for realizing the ambitions in the Green Deal the stakeholders are involved in developing strategies. A literature review and interviews with experts provide insight in the opportunities and vulnerabilities of city logistics. The research deals also with four scenarios in order to help professionals anticipate on potential risk and uncertainty in the future. Including the risk and uncertainty in the pathway roadmap helps to make the pathways robust and also applicable in changing environments. Through an interactive roadmapping workshop with professionals of city logistics the foundations of the strategic plan are developed. The graphical representation of the strategies from the roadmapping workshop results in a map with multiple action strategies. In this map the strategies of market parties and governments are separated, since governments can latter interfere in the process of change. Strategic planners can use the pathway roadmap to select their preferred pathway and use it as a tool in communication. Besides, an important advantage of roadmapping can be derived from the roadmapping process itself instead of the pathway map. Alongside studies on ontologies and stakeholder analysis, a pathway roadmap can help to frame the problem field. Almost in all the policy top sectors in the Netherlands can benefit from pathway roadmapping. The logistics operators and the municipality should start with the quick wins and begin to cooperate. In order to achieve zero emission zones in 2025 the strategic planners have to be ambitious. High targets will stimulate disruptive innovations, which can be adjusted if necessary. The top sector transport policy should be responsible for the pathway roadmap so that the pathway roadmap is respected and complied with. The pathway roadmap can also be used to assign research budgets. Further research can be done to apply pathway roadmaps on a larger scale, such as at the European or worldwide level.