Comparing Direct Deliveries and Automated Parcel Locker Systems with Respect to Overall CO2 Emissions for the Last Mile

Fast growing e-commerce has a significant impact both on CEP providers and public entities. While service providers have the first priority on factors such as costs and reliable service, both are increasingly focused on environmental effects, in the interest of company image and the inhabitants’ health and comfort. Significant additional factors are traffic density, pollution, and noise. While in the past direct delivery with distribution trucks from regional depots to the customers might have been justified, this is no longer valid when taking the big and growing numbers into account. Several options are followed in the literature, especially variants that introduce an additional break in the distribution chain, like local mini-hubs, mobile distribution points, or Automated Parcel Lockers (APLs). The first two options imply a “very last mile” stage, e.g., by small electrical vehicles or cargo bikes, and APLs rely on the customers to operate the very last step. The usage of this schema will significantly depend on the density of the APLs and, thus, on the density of the population within quite small regions. The relationships between the different elements of these technologies and the potential customers are studied with respect to their impact on the above-mentioned factors. A variety of scenarios is investigated, covering different options for customer behaviors. As an additional important point, reported studies with APLs only consider the section up to the APLs and the implied CO2 emission. This, however, fully neglects the potentially very relevant pollution created by the customers when fetching their parcels from the APL. Therefore, in this paper this impact is systematically estimated via a simulation-based sensitivity analysis. It can be shown that taking this very last transport step into account in the calculation significantly changes the picture, especially within areas in outer city districts.