Urban consolidation centres (UCCs) have been discussed over many years in the city logistics literature. The amount of successful UCCs in the long run were, and are, very scarce, though. Little is published on the practical issues and experiences of running a UCC and offering UCC-services. In the Netherlands, Binnenstadservice (BSS) has run UCCs and UCC services for over a decade now. This contribution discusses development and the experiences of running a UCC in practice in the form of seven lessons, including the evolvement of the business model and organisation model, as well as the development from offering 'only' the cross-dock of physical flows, to that of the full triple cross-dock, including financial and information flows. Next, UCCs can be the answer to future challenges, such as zero emission city logistics and fit perfectly into the Physical Internet vision.
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from the article: "Abstract The way in which construction logistics is organised has considerable impact on production flow, transportation efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions and congestion, particularly in urban areas such as city centres. In cities such as London and Amsterdam municipalities have issued new legislation and stricter conditions for vehicles to be able to access cities and city centres in particular. Considerate clients, public as well private, have started developing tender policies to encourage contractors to reduce the environmental impact of construction projects. This paper reports on an ongoing research project applying and assessing developments in the field of construction logistics in the Netherlands. The cases include contractors and third party logistics providers applying consolidation centres and dedicated software solutions to increase transportation efficiency. The case show various results of JIT logistics management applied to urban construction projects leading to higher transportation efficiencies, and reduced environmental impact and increased production efficiency on site. The data collections included to-site en on-site observations, measurement and interviews. The research has shown considerable reductions of vehicles to deliver goods and to transport workers to site. In addition the research has shown increased production flow and less waste such as inventory, waiting and unnecessary motion on site."
Landside operations in air cargo terminals consist of many freight forwarders (FFWs) delivering and picking up cargo at the capacity-constrained loading docks at the airport's ground handlers' (GHs) facilities. To improve the operations of the terminal and take advantage of their geographical proximity a small set of FFWs can build a coalition to consolidate stochastically-arriving shipments and share truck fleet capacity while other FFWs continue bringing cargo to the terminal in a non-cooperative manner. Results from a detailed discrete-event simulation model of the cargo landside operations in Amsterdam Aiport showed that all operational policies had trade-offs in terms of the average shipment cycle time of coalition FFWs, the average shipment cycle time of non-coalition FFWs, and the total distance traveled by the coalition fleet, suggesting that horizontal cooperation in this context was not always beneficial, contrary to what previous studies on horizontal cooperation have found. Since dock capacity constitutes a significant constraint on operations in air cargo hubs, this paper also investigates the effect of dock capacity utilization and horizontal cooperation on the performance of consolidation policies implemented by the coalition. Thus, we built a general model of the air cargo terminal to analyze the effects caused by dock capacity utilization without the added complexity of landside operations at Amsterdam Airport to investigate whether the results hold for more general scenarios. Results from the general simulation model suggest that, in scenarios where dock and truck capacity become serious constraints, the average shipment cycle times of non-coalition FFWs are reduced at the expense of an increase in the cycle times of FFWs who constitute the coalition. A good balance among all the performance measures considered in this study is reached by following a policy that takes advantage of consolidating shipments based on individual visits to GH.
Our country contains a very dense and challenging transport and mobility system. National research agendas and roadmaps of multiple sectors such as HTSM, Logistics and Agri&food, promote vehicle automation as a means to increase transport safety and efficiency. SMEs applying vehicle automation require compliance to application/sector specific standards and legislation. A key aspect is the safety of the automated vehicle within its design domain, to be proven by manufacturers and assessed by authorities. The various standards and procedures show many similarities but also lead to significant differences in application experience and available safety related solutions. For example: Industrial AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles) have been around for many years, while autonomous road vehicles are only found in limited testing environments and pilots. Companies are confronted with an increasing need to cover multiple application environments, such restricted areas and public roads, leading to complex technical choices and parallel certification/homologation procedures. SafeCLAI addresses this challenge by developing a framework for a generic safety layer in the control of autonomous vehicles that can be re-used in different applications across sectors. This is done by extensive consolidation and application of cross-sectoral knowledge and experience – including analysis of related standards and procedures. The framework promises shorter development times and enables more efficient assessment procedures. SafeCLAI will focus on low-speed applications since they are most wanted and technically best feasible. Nevertheless, higher speed aspects will be considered to allow for future extension. SafeCLAI will practically validate (parts) of the foreseen safety layer and publish the foreseen framework as a baseline for future R&D, allowing coverage of broader design domains. SafeCLAI will disseminate the results in the Dutch arena of autonomous vehicle development and application, and also integrate the project learnings into educational modules.
1. Evaluate priority incentive electrical taxis: Bji het Centraal Station is reeds een voorrangsincentive voor elektrische taxis ingesteld. Gedurende deze case zullen we het effect de huidige regeling toetsen en nagaan wat het effect is op kosten en baten alsmede business case van de e-taxi. Daarnaast zal een technische ontwerpstudie van een dergelijke standplaats onderdeel van dit subproject zijn. 2. Strategic placement of (semi) public charge infra in ArenA Area: In deze case wordt onderzocht op welke manier de laadpalen kunnen bijdragen aan het reguleren van verkeer richting de ArenA en waar deze laadpalen gepositioneerd dienen te worden. 3. Consolidation of city logistics at ArenA Area; In deze case wordt de haalbaarheid onderzocht van incentives op logistieke dienstverleners. Bij welke incentives is het voor vervoerders interessant om over te stappen op elektrisch vervoer? 4. Pilot incentive exemption from parking tax: Hierbij wordt de prijsprikkel “ontheffing van parkeerbelasting”, die de gemeente Amsterdam wil inzetten ter bevordering van e-taxis, onderzocht en gemonitord, waarbij kosten en baten worden vergeleken. 5. Determine hotspot location for e-taxi’s: Incentive-beschikbaarheid- Bepaling van meest kansrijke en faciliterende laadlocaties op basis van ritgegevens van taxi's (hotspot) inclusief vaststelling van eisen/wensen voor de laadfaciliteiten (e.g. (snel)laders) inclusief monitoring van het gebruik na plaatsing.
