Evaluation of reserved loading areas for last mile delivery
Publication date
2026-02-04
Document type
Forschungsartikel
Author
Organisational unit
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Series or journal
EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics
ISSN
Periodical volume
15
Article ID
100176
Peer-reviewed
✅
Part of the university bibliography
✅
Language
English
Keyword
Last-mile delivery
City logistics
Two-tier transportation
Mixed-integer programming
Simulation
Abstract
The increasing volume of parcels leads to challenges due to unauthorized parking especially in cities. This paper considers the concept of loading areas which are the only allowed parking spaces for delivery services. Loading areas are installed by cities and include one or several parking spaces. Via a smartphone app these parking spaces can be reserved and opened (bollards) by companies or drivers. We introduce a model to collaboratively assign parking times in loading areas. The model is investigated in a comprehensive computational study and compared with the state-of-the-art, where delivery services may stop in unauthorized positions, and loading areas without collaborative reservation with a first-come-first-serve scheme. Our results show that the concept can be a useful solution for the trade-off between safety (no unauthorized parking) and tour duration. Tour durations can be improved substantially by collaborative planning, an increased number of loading areas and parking spaces, and high delivery speeds between loading areas and customers.
Description
This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Version
Published version
Access right on openHSU
Metadata only access