Assessing the impacts of e-commerce on future urban logistics scenarios : case study of the city of Rome

The goal of essentially CO2-free city logistics in major urban centers by 2030 remains one of the most ambitious challenges that still seems very difficult to achieve. The efforts made so far by local governments have barely managed to counteract the freight demand growth in recent years. In this domain, the increasing penetration of the e-commerce (and vehicle flows) can further afflict air quality, traffic congestion, road safety and life quality in urban centers or can be guided by regulation to seize the opportunity to develop more livable cities. This paper aims at assessing the sustainability of future urban logistics developments, with an application to the case study of the city of Rome. Future exploratory scenarios are simulated through an aggregate multi-stage urban freight model and are assessed according to the measurement methodologies recommended by the joint European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme (EMEP)/European Environment Agency (EEA) inventory guidebook. The results show that the e-commerce penetration growth, which mainly implies a fragmentation of deliveries over space and time and an increase of smaller operating Light Goods Vehicles (LGVs), leads to an increase in overall vehicular mileage. This outcome, combined with forecasts on commercial vehicles distributions by fuel and eco-standards highlights that the transition to the latest petrol and diesel engines is already effective for reducing pollutant emissions, but not enough to reduce GHG emissions and energy consumption ; for a significant reduction of the latter, a shift towards more eco-sustainable alternative fuels and the optimization of the distances traveled by LGVs appears necessary.