TRANSPORTATION SCIENCE,
Models for Evaluating and Planning City Logistics Systems
Teodor Gabriel Crainic,
Nicoletta Ricciardi,
Giovanni Storchi
Départment de Management et Technologie, École des Sciences de la Gestion, and Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT), Université du Québec à Montréal, C.P. 8888, succ. Centre-ville, Montréal, Québec H3C 3P8, Canada
Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate, Sapienza Università di Roma, 00185 Rome, Italy
Dipartimento di Statistica, Probabilità e Statistiche Applicate, Sapienza Università di Roma, 00185 Rome, Italy
teodorgabriel.crainic{at}cirrelt.ca
nicoletta.ricciardi{at}uniroma.it
giovanni.storchi{at}uniroma.it
City logistics aims to reduce the nuisances associated to freight transportation in urban areas while supporting their economic and social development. The fundamental idea is to view individual stakeholders and decisions as components of an integrated logistics system. This implies the coordination of shippers, carriers, and movements as well as the consolidation of loads of several customers and carriers into the same environment-friendly vehicles. City logistics explicitly aims to optimize such advanced urban transportation systems. We focus on a challenging city logistics planning issue, the integrated short-term scheduling of operations and management of resources, for the general case involving a two-tiered distribution structure. We investigate the main issues related to the problem, introduce a new problem class, propose both a general model and formulations for the main system components, and identify promising solution avenues.
Key Words: city logistics; advanced urban freight transportation; integrated short-term planning and management; service network design; vehicle routing
History: Received: May 2005;
revised: March 2009;
accepted: April 2009.
Copyright © 2009 by INFORMS.
