Prioritizing Outlier Parcels for Public Transport-Based Crowdshipping in Urban Logistics
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Date
2024
Subject Area
place - urban, policy - sustainable, planning - methods
Keywords
freight systems, freight distribution, freight model/modeling, freight truck, planning and analysis, freight distribution networks
Abstract
The continuous growth of e-commerce puts pressure on logistic service providers to fulfill more parcel deliveries. Concurrently, there are increasing calls from governments and society to carry this out sustainably. Crowdshipping is one possible innovative logistic service that addresses these challenges. Crowdshipping enlists members of the public to fulfill parcel deliveries, ideally en route along their pre-committed journeys. In this paper, we consider a setting where public transport passengers can serve as crowdshippers and propose a comprehensive framework to organize the scheme. Firstly, outlier parcels are identified as being suitable for crowdshipping. Then, these outlying parcels are matched with crowdshippers, who pick up parcels from a set of selected parcel lockers. We also investigate the viability of crowdshipping with real-world data. By comparing a carrier’s performance to a base case without crowdshipping, the results show that delivery vehicle kilometers traveled and associated carbon dioxide emissions can reduce by up to 20%. A total of 11% of parcels can be redirected to be delivered via crowdshipping. Crowdshipping using public transport has the potential to be a sustainable way to fulfill urban logistics in a dense city.
Rights
Permission to publish the abstract has been given by SAGE, copyright remains with them.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, M., & Cheah, L. (2024). Prioritizing Outlier Parcels for Public Transport-Based Crowdshipping in Urban Logistics. Transportation Research Record, 2678(3), 601-612.
