Overview of city logistics and urban freight transport operations

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of city logistics and urban freight transport (UFT) operations. City logistics aim at balancing the economic growth and the environmental sustainability of cities. City logistics have three goals: mobility, sustainability, and liveability. We face difficult and complicated issues, such as higher logistics costs, traffic congestion, air pollution, noise, crashes, and higher energy consumption associated with urban freight transport. To solve these problems, emerging technologies including ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems), ICT (Information and Communication Technology), IoT (Internet of Things), big data, AI (Artificial Intelligence), and robots are useful. Collaboration and coordination among stakeholders who are involved in city logistics are essential to successfully implement schemes to improve sustainability. UFT operations are carried out by private logistics companies but public–private partnerships are needed to totally optimise urban freight transport systems. Understanding stakeholder behaviour is important for modeling city logistics.