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

• Published in: Sustainability Vol. 15; no. 16; p. 12266
• Main Authors: Ahani, Parisa, Arantes, Amílcar, Garmanjani, Rohollah, Melo, Sandra
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.08.2023
• Subjects: Automobiles, Electric; Cost analysis; Electric vehicles; Emission standards; Emissions; Environmental impact; Inner city; International economic relations; Laws, regulations and rules; Linear programming; Optimization; Shipment of goods; Sustainability; Sustainable urban development; Transportation industry; Urban areas; Portugal
• ISSN: 2071-1050; 2071-1050
• DOI: 10.3390/su151612266

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.