Classification and benchmark of City Logistics measures: an empirical analysis

ABSTRACT

Urban freight distribution accounts for a significant share of pollution and congestion in urban areas. To reduce these negative impacts, municipalities have implemented several City Logistics (CL) measures. This paper presents the empirical analysis of a dataset of 70 European cities that have been piloting or rolling out a CL measure, to provide an updated indication of the status of CL initiatives and analyse the diffusion of CL internationally. The research objective is also to help understand the contextual factors might explain their introduction. To this end, a set of City Logistics Indices (CLI) is used as indicators of the breadth and number of CL measures implemented in a city. A statistical correlation of these CLIs with respect to a set of independent variables, namely the contextual factors, is also performed. Results reveal that the level of pollution, the diffusion of e-commerce and GDP are important drivers of CL deployment.

KEYWORDS:

• City Logistics
• classification
• dataset
• factor analysis
• correlation analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Ms Silvia Moroni for her active involvement and contribution to this research as a Master student in the M.Sc. Program in Engineering & Management at the Politecnico di Torino.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Alberto De Marco http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4145-2287

Giulio Mangano http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2792-505X

Giovanni Zenezini http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0996-6739