Citywide Impacts of E-Commerce: Does Parcel Delivery Travel Outweigh Household Shopping Travel Reductions?
- Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
- Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
E-commerce has facilitated online ordering of goods by households in recent years. This technological advancement has disrupted shopping related transportation. While the National Household Travel Survey (NHTS [1]) finds that household shopping frequency has declined in the last 10-20 years, deliveries by parcel delivery trucks and vans [2] have increased. However, the net effect of these phenomena on overall trip making, vehicle-miles traveled (VMT) and fuel consumption has not been quantified. From a regional planning perspective, understanding the net effect is important for informing city policies--for example, in regards to land use and transportation planning. The objective of this research is to address this gap. In this study, the net regional impact of e-commerce on transportation and fuel consumption is evaluated. The approach relies on a powerful, agent-based modeling framework (POLARIS [3]) that models decisions made by individual household and commercial agents. E-commerce demand is modeled for each household using a bilevel multinomial probit structure that evaluates e-commerce participation and ordering frequency. Last-mile delivery tours were constructed using GIS-based tools and information from a major parcel delivery company [4]. After integrating the resulting supply and demand models with all other passenger and commercial traffic within POLARIS, a traffic simulation was performed and subsequently VMT and energy consumption were analyzed. The study finds that while e-commerce has generated an increase in parcel truck delivery trips, the net effect of e-commerce is a reduction in VMT and fuel consumption due major reductions in these quantities via shopping trip reductions.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) - Vehicle Technologies Office
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357
- OSTI ID:
- 1579195
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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