Efficient city logistics : Can travel patterns of goods and people be intertwined?

Abstract

Optimizing city logistics is a topic of great importance for big cities today. Even though the environmental- and economical consequences of the increasing goods transportation fleet has been present for quite some time, actions from affected stakeholders has not been taken until just recently.  In this brief 9 week project the aim has been to,  from a design point-of-view, in this complex topic, give a suggestion and raise a discussion onto how goods transportation in cities can be made in the future.  The basic idea is to get the consignments as close to the consignees and their travel patterns as possible. Public transportation networks are an existing grid where people are moving around and can potentially be used for combined transport of goods and people. The outcome of this concept is focusing on light parcel delivery towards private consignees, due to the increasing e-commerce trend. By using small transporter vehicles connected to buses, light parcels can be distributed throughout a city and easily accessible for consignees at the bus stops.  The transporter vehicle developed through this project aims to conceptualize connectivity and integration between mobility and parcel delivery services, to ease the every day life of urban citizens as well as decrease the environmental- and economical impacts which the distribution vehicle-fleet of today entails.  The design of the transporter vehicle is an interpretation of how a autonomous distribution vehicle can look like in a future city environment where the integration of public-utility-vehicles is of greater importance.

Original document

The different versions of the original document can be found in:

• http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-107044