The effect of vehicle load on urban freight emissions

Abstract

Several city logistics initiatives focus on lowering last-mile deliveries’ environmental impacts. And here, the impact is often the total (absolute) pollutants emitted by urban goods vehicles and the population's exposure to those pollutants. Some of these interventions include the conversion of traditional fleets to clean(er) fuels or imposing vehicle access restrictions, based on emission standards, in the form of (ultra) low emission zones. Many of these interventions rely on models to predict and evaluate, a priori, what the impact will be. But, like all models, assumptions must be made, resulting in predicted results underestimating actual emissions. For urban logistics, more than for private cars, the literature shows a substantial difference between the predicted and tail-pipe emissions for most pollutants. This paper builds on prior research and shows the cargo load's nonlinear effect on emissions in an urban environment.