Developments in urban delivery and more generally the tools involved in urban logistics are evolving very quickly.

Distribution in city centers due to changes in legislation and the various implementation of ZFEs must reinvent itself every day. The goal is to meet legislative and environmental expectations but also the expectations of recipient customers, whether they are traders, businesses or individuals.

Environmental adaptation of vehicles

The introduction of new vehicles that more or less break with habits responds to environmental constraints. Access to the city center is and will be increasingly restricted. Consequently, the first transformations implemented were utility vehicles with new energies such as electric, gas and more precisely “green” gas in order to have a real ecological interest. These vehicles evolve as manufacturers get creative with vehicles specifically developed for city centers with smaller sizes and improved maneuverability.

New tools to deliver

After this greening of so-called usual delivery vehicles, a major development was the arrival in our city center of cargo bikes. Evolution in the sense that the bicycle has transformed into a true “utility bicycle” with relatively large carrying capacities. Whether we are on a cargo bike, a scooter, whether towing or not, we reach a capacity of 300 kg.

So certainly these capacities are out of all proportion to usual utility vehicles. But where the delivery service provider loses payload, it gains in accessibility. Deliveries by cargo bike allow you to position yourself as close as possible to the recipient, freeing yourself from delivery constraints in terms of access and schedule. Indeed, thanks to its dimensions, the physical limits of access to city centers are not blocking. These tools make it possible to have a longer delivery window which also makes it possible to meet recipient's expectations.

These bicycles contribute to the decongestion of city centers since they make it possible to process part of the flows corresponding to their carrying capacity, but their implementation is in itself a small revolution. Revolution for last mile operators because it is necessary to review the city center distribution plan, to review the organization, to recruit new delivery person profiles. This cannot therefore be done without a profound rethinking of the distribution processes.

This implementation has also brought changes to the vehicle landscape in urban areas with a need for adaptation and acceptance of the population present in city centers. These developments have many virtues, but they remain developments that must be accepted and integrated. Certainly, they make it possible to respond to new environmental and regulatory constraints, which are of the times, but this still requires adaptation.

A complete breakup

Human beings always have the desire to adapt and evolve a little more, today we are moving towards a solution that will bring a real breakthrough through the implementation of autonomous vehicles. This evolution is already underway with follower vehicles starting to appear and which, as their name suggests, follow the operator.

But tomorrow, we will have completely autonomous vehicles on roads and open streets. Through the experiment initiated and managed by SprintProject in which LOGUP (Clean Urban Logistics, TCP Group) has the pleasure of being able to participate alongside stakeholders such as DPD Group, LMAD and Troyes Champagne Métropole, an important step is being played out.

We are no longer in an evolution here but in a real revolution and this in several ways and all the stages are important:

• Define the silhouette of the vehicle the most suitable for urban distribution to optimize its capacities and facilitate its use.
• Integrate this new distribution tool within an operation transport taking into account its capacities. The autonomous vehicle will not have a predefined circuit, but a circuit dependent on each of its deliveries.
• Define usage model. The vehicle is autonomous in the transfer of goods, but it remains to organize its loading and unloading.
• Integrate the autonomous vehicle into traffic flows and pedestrian flows.
• Understanding its integration by the population who will be in contact with these tools of tomorrow (pedestrians, cyclists, motorists, etc.).

While in recent years we have been talking about developments in delivery vehicles, today we are entering a real revolution as all the stakeholders (urban logistics operators, cities and communities of municipalities, users of city centers) will have to adapt to these new tools.

Each of these actors will have to approach the act of delivery differently. The autonomous vehicle will bring an overhaul of urban distribution.

So of course, each vehicle retains its specific characteristics and responds to particular requests. The autonomous vehicle, like the cargo bike, will not be able to meet all the specificities of deliveries (weight, dimensions, product specificities, etc.). But just as we have adopted an energy mix at the level of heavy goods vehicles, as a player in urban logistics we will be on a technical and technological mix. It's up to everyone to adapt, but evolution is underway and is always accelerating a little more.

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