Impacts of home shopping on vehicle operations and greenhouse gas emissions: multi-year regional study

ABSTRACT

As a shopping behavior trend, home shopping has become more popular. This shopping method seems to decrease shopping trips, yet more delivery trucks are required to be on the roads. In addition, even more personal trips may occur because saving time on shopping might allow more time for alternate activities. A study investigated the effects of home shopping on vehicle operations and greenhouse gas emissions. The purpose of that study was to identify the home-shopping impacts on transportation system, its net effects on traffic volume of the transportation network, its effects associated with environmental sustainability and then to provide some projections for future condition. Simulation results showed that home shopping will put additional burden on Newark transportation network, as identified through four measures of effectiveness (MOEs) which were travel time, delay, average speed and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

KEYWORDS:

• Home shopping
• emissions
• environmental impacts
• mobility
• vehicular effects

Acknowledgement

This work has been financially supported by the Delaware Center for Transportation (DCT) co-sponsored by the University of Delaware and the Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT). The authors wish to express their sincere gratitude to DCT for providing their extensive data sources and offering technical assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.