Evaluating the Environmental Impact of Using Cargo Bikes in Cities: A Comprehensive Review of Existing Approaches

Abstract

The impact of the use of cargo bicycles for delivery processes on the environment is undeniably positive: it leads to the reduction of pollutants, noise, and vibrations caused by traditional vehicles; decreases traffic jams; causes more effective use of public space; and others. But how should such an effect be measured? What tools should be used to justify the necessity for change to more sustainable means of transport? How can we improve the state of the environment considering the interests of logistics service providers? There is a large amount of scientific literature dedicated to this problem: by using different modeling approaches, authors attempt to address the issue of sustainable transport. This paper conducts a literature review in the field of green cargo deliveries, investigates the benefits and drawbacks of integrating cargo bikes in urban logistics schemes, and examines methodologies and techniques for evaluating the impact of using cargo bicycles on the environment. By providing an opportunity to get acquainted with the situation in the sphere of green deliveries, the authors aim to encourage a breakthrough in the field of sustainable transport that may be achieved by using cargo bikes in modern cities. We review the existing approaches and tools for modeling transport emissions and state the significant positive environmental consequences.

Introducing SNAP: a novel pedal-assisted electric ultralight vehicle

“…Previous research in this field has been very limited. There are no scientific articles specifically related to electric pedalassisted vehicles, and of the little material available in the literature, including [22][23][24][25][26], none addresses the performance aspect. The physics and performance of the bicycles in a planar and sloped motion have been presented in [22] and laid the foundations to extend the study to cargo ( 14) and pedal assisted vehicles with the additional power constraint of 250 W. This regulatory power limit has made the design of SNAP very difficult, as the overall weight must be kept very low.…”

Avaliação Do Ganho Ambiental Com O Uso Da Bicicleta De Carga Na Última Milha – Uma Revisão Sistemática Da Literatura

“…Utilizando um modelo matemático, é feito todo o processo logístico da rede e para a sustentabilidade foi encontrado que as bicicletas de carga reduzem as emissões em até 66% em relação às entregas por vans, porém os autores destacam que é uma alternativa para distritos urbanos, não substituindo meios convencionais de longa distância. Vasiutina et al, (2021) também tem como foco como o efeito da redução de poluentes com o uso de bicicletas pode ser medido. Destaca-se que o trabalho não discorda do ganho ambiental que é descrito como "inegavelmente positivo", e tenta medir tal ganho por meio de técnicas para avaliar o impacto do uso das bicicletas de carga no meio ambiente.…”

Last-Mile Logistics Network Design under E-Cargo Bikes

“…Table 4 shows the corresponding results. The best resulting route set for ACO consists of five routes in this case ( [21,20,25,19,2,1], [23,10,11,3], [12,13,5,6,4], [24,17,16,15,14,22], [9,8,7,18]) versus four routes for the GA ( [13,20,21,2,12,9,5], [6,8,3,22,7,4,1], [18,14,24,23,10,11], [16,15,17,19,25]). As seen in Table…”

“…Caggiani et al [22] presented an e-cargo bike routing model for last-mile delivery, considering both travel time and driver exposure to emissions. For a thorough review of related studies, we refer the interested reader to the survey papers by Narayan and Antoniou [3] and Vasiutina et al [23].…”