Estimating the benefits of dedicated unloading bays by field experimentation

Performance Evaluation of Stochastic Systems with Dedicated Delivery Bays and General On-Street Parking

“…Because it is very difficult to find parking space, vehicles are searching for parking space extensively (Cassady and Kobza 1998;Shoup 2006;Dowling, Ratliff, and Zhang 2019;Dalla Chiara and Goodchild 2020) and may be forced to park illegally causing difficulties to other traffic (Kladeftiras andAntoniou 2013, Gao andOzbay 2016). In a field experiment, Fransoo, Cedillo-Campos, and Gamez-Perez (2021) show that by providing more delivery bay space, efficiency improvements in deliveries of up to 40% could be reached. Because this efficiency gain could be used to include more cargo in the vehicle (urban delivery vehicles are often not filled to capacity), this could potentially reduce the number of vehicles needed and increase the number of deliveries per vehicle.…”

“…This is particularly the case in high-density urban environments where the retail landscape (for business-tobusiness deliveries) is very dense or the consumer density (for business-to-consumer deliveries) is very high. For instance, in a field study on deliveries to nanostores (traditional convenience stores) in Latin America, Fransoo, Cedillo-Campos, and Gamez-Perez (2021) show that delivery vehicles were parked about 80% of the total time spent on the route; hence, only about 20% is spent with the vehicle in motion. Similarly high numbers have been shown in other studies in North America (Jaller, Holguín-Veras, and Hodge 2013; Goodchild and Ivanov 2017).…”