Abstract:
Freight transport stakeholders can benefit from collaborative planning. Unfortunately, appropriate decision and
planning support tools are lacking. Consequently, freight stakeholders remain unaware of collaboration opportunities and the potential benefit of those coalitions. This paper focuses on implementing collaboration between
urban freight receivers and carriers. Collaboration takes the form of cost-sharing among coalition members when
receivers are willing to extend their time windows. Rigorous experiments confirm the behavioural sensitivity of
the model. A realistically-sized case study in the City of Cape Town, South Africa, demonstrates the usability of
the agent-based simulation model. The case study considers the impact of collaboration on after-hour deliveries.
Results indicate that delivery cost reduces significantly (nearly 30%) when carriers and receivers are willing to
collaborate and adopt after-hour deliveries - the carrier’s fleet composition changes to favour fewer but larger
vehicles.
