Over the last few years, the volume of freight transported in India has increased exponentially due to India's rapidly growing economy. Indian Railways, once the largest freight transport mode in the country, is rapidly losing it share in national freight mobility to road-based transport, which is more energy and emissions intensive. With the rail sector being one of the most environmentally benign mode of land transport, it is critical for the country to retain, and increase its share in overall freight traffic. This initiative carries out a commodity wise analysis to identify reasons for the reducing share of railways and proposes short to medium term recommendation to reverse this trend...
Best practicies for Sustainable Urban Freight are explained using cases studies from various countries...
Last-mile deliveries are being disrupted by e-commerce expansion, customer demands for faster delivery, population growth, rising urban land costs, and increasing congestion. Companies are acting quickly to develop new business models for transporting goods between producers, distribution centres, and consumers to respond to these trends. In these factsheets, we examine two possible ways to modernize urban freight deliveries: microhubs and cargo cycles...
In order to keep up with increasing demand for goods movement while mitigating the negative impacts of freight activity in dense urban areas, some businesses are rethinking their delivery operations. This report focuses on two emerging operating models that are being integrated into the goods movement network in North American and European cities to improve the efficiency of deliveries in congested urban areas: delivery microhubs and cyclelogistics...
This report looks at municipal and industry-led initiatives and solutions to address urban freight challenges, that are done through a variety of stakeholder engagement and collaborative approaches. We highlight best practices in freight management, including case studies from New York City, Toronto, Sweden and London, England. The examples range from stakeholder forums to pilot projects and living labs that are testing on-the-ground solutions to improve the movement of goods, showing that while there's no uniform approach to urban freight management, there are a growing number of emerging initiatives in response to these challenges...
India has witnessed rapid economic growth in the last two decades. One of the main factors in sustaining such accelerated economic growth has been the investment and development of critical infrastructure such as road, railways, ports and civil aviation. The drive to develop and improve transport infrastructure is especially apparent in Indian cities. Nevertheless, the urban freight sector has been largely absent from the planning agenda of Indian cities. Looking at the urban freight sector, this paper provides an overview of the goods movement taking place within the context of urban India. It furthermore looks at a wide range of national and international case studies, trying to highlight potential pitfalls and success stories that help the development of a sustainable urban freight sector in India...
The overall objective of FREVUE was to create an evidence base on European best practice which will underpin future uptake of electric freight vehicles (EFVs) by logistics operators and justify potential policy interventions to promote the use of EFVs for urban deliveries. Overall FREVUE trialled over 80 electric freight vehicles (EFVs) and assisted with the installation of 75 charging points in demonstrator cities. Urban consolidation centres and innovative policy such as free parking, pre-booking systems for EFV charging and operational incentives for the use of EFVs were also trialled and reported on within the project...
The report covers all the aspects of acheiving sustaiblitiy in Freight Transport. It talks abou the possible technological and policy solutions along with case studies for the same...
The American trucking industry moves 60 percent of America’s goods using 3.5 million tractors and 5.3 million trailers. Yet despite their ubiquity, tractor-trailer designs have remained fundamentally unchanged for fifty years. Within the trucking industry, long-haul heavy-duty (Class 7 and 8) trucks offer particularly great efficiency potential. Despite accounting for less than half of the nation’s trucks, Class 7 and 8 trucks account for almost 80 percent of trucks’ fuel consumption. Their size, speed, and poor aerodynamics mean Class 7 and 8 trucks are laden with “low-hanging fruit” (cost-effective efficiency and retrofitting opportunities). According to a recent analysis by Rocky Mountain Institute, the technology already exists to double trucking efficiency...
Feasible technological improvements in vehicle efficiency, combined with “long combination vehicles” (which raise productivity by connecting multiple trailers), can potentially raise the ton-mile efficiency of long-haul heavy tractor-trailers by a factor ~2.5 with respect to a baseline of 130 ton-miles/gal. Within existing technological and logistical constraints, these innovations (which do not include such further opportunities as hybrid-electric powertrains or auxiliary power units to displace idling) could thus cut the average fuel used to move each ton of freight by ~64 percent. This would annually save the current U.S. Class 8 fleet about four billion gallons of diesel fuel and 45 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Further benefits would include lower shipping costs, bigger profits for trucking companies, fewer tractor-trailers on the road, and fewer fatal accidents involving them. Thus transformational, not incremental, redesign of tractors, trailers, and (especially) both as an integrated system can broadly benefit economic prosperity, public health, energy security, and environmental quality...