Localization of Relevant Urban Micro-Consolidation Centers for Last-Mile Cargo Bike Delivery Based on Real Demand Data and City Characteristics

Abstract

The use of cargo cycles for last-mile parcel distribution requires urban micro-consolidation centers (UMC). We develop an approach to localize suitable locations for UMCs with the consideration of three criteria: demand, land use, and type of road. The analysis considers metric levels (demand), linguistic levels (land use), and cardinal levels (type of road). The land-use category is divided into commercial, residential, mixed commercial and residential, and others. The type of road category is divided into bicycle road, pedestrian zone, oneway road, and traffic-calmed road. The approach is a hybrid multi-criteria analysis combining an Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) and PROMETHEE methods. We apply the approach to the city center of Stuttgart in Germany, using real demand data provided by a large logistics service provider. We compared different scenarios weighting the criteria differently with DART software. The different weight allocation results in different numbers of required UMCs and slightly different locations. This research was able to develop, implement, and successfully apply the proposed approach. In subsequent steps, stakeholders such as logistics companies and cities should be involved at all levels of this approach to validate the selected criteria and depict the “weight” of each criterion.