Optimizing Vehicle Replacement in Sustainable Urban Freight Transportation Subject to Presence of Regulatory Measures

Abstract

Since the 1990s, studies and pilot tests have been conducted to reduce traffic, accidents, and pollution due to urban freight transport (UFT). These ended up in several policies, regulations, and restrictions for UFT, such as low emission zones, delivery time windows, and vehicle size and weight restrictions. However, issues in UFT under regulatory measures still persist. This study introduces an optimization framework for deriving an optimal combination of various types of vehicles with different capacities for vehicle replacement with UFT. This framework allows an understanding of how an urban freight company with a limited budget efficiently satisfies its freight demand within an urban area in the presence of regulatory measures by urban administrators. The introduced formulation, which is mixed-integer linear programming, will assist the operator in choosing the best investment strategy for introducing new vehicles of certain types and sizes, for operation in different zones, into its fleet while gaining economic benefits and having a positive impact on the liveability of the urban area. Furthermore, an elasticity analysis is performed to consider the effects of specific uncertain parameters on the total cost. The numerical results show that the share of electric vehicles in the fleet increases, and they are more competitive than diesel vehicles.

Demand-Responsive Transport for Urban Mobility: Integrating Mobile Data Analytics to Enhance Public Transportation Systems

“…Urban mobility systems are constituted mainly by a combination of private vehicles, public transportation fleets, and increasing options such as ridesharing and micro-mobility solutions competing for public space usage, and are struggling to provide more efficient, sustainable, and user-friendly solutions [15,16]. Considering these challenges, studying and exploring the concept of transport on demand has gained significant importance as a potential concept in urban transportation.…”

Strategic Decision-Making for Multi-Period Fleet Transition Towards Zero-Emission: Preliminary Study

“…Such a problem is faced in maritime transportation-where before creating an optimization model, informed market analysis was conducted-to identify the minimal number of electric vessels needed to fully replace the current diesel fleet, while considering multiple factors, including transport demand, vessel quantity, and environmental sustainability [26]. The study by Ahani et al [27] presents an innovative framework designed to support urban freight transportation operators in optimizing their fleet configuration to minimize overall costs while adhering to regulations related to vehicle size and type and complying with specific city zones defined by local authorities. The framework takes into account various cost factors, including vehicle acquisition, energy consumption, emissions, maintenance, salvage, and labor across different vehicle types.…”

“…This aimed to determine the minimum number of electric vessels necessary to replace the current ON-powered fleet, considering factors like transport demand and environmental sustainability. Another study by Ahani et al [27] introduced a novel framework for urban freight transportation operators. This framework optimizes a fleet composed of various types of vehicles, considering the demand for services, geographical and demographic characteristics of the city, and legal obligations along with costs of purchase, refueling, maintenance, and operations as well as emission.…”