Modeling the impact of an urban consolidation center on the total truck mileage

The most important principles of urban logistics are coordination and consolidation. They are believed to be realized through the creation of an urban consolidation center or a network of such centers. Theoretically, the operation of such a center should lead to a reduction in the overall volume of truck traffic in the given city district. This article describes the signs of these principles' implementation. The purpose of the article is to evaluate the impact of coordinating the activities of different consignees and consolidating their cargo shipments on the change in a specific parameter – the total mileage of trucks in real transportation conditions.

An algorithm for modeling urban delivery in specialized software is proposed. Using this software, experiments were conducted across four scenarios with three parameters of demand for goods delivery within the Novosibirsk district. The scenario and demand settings determine various restrictions on the joint delivery of goods from different clients in a single vehicle. The article confirms the dependence of the reduction in the total mileage of trucks on the number of companies-clients of the urban consolidation center (level of participation) and the number of jointly delivered cargo batches (level of consolidation).

The influence of cargo lot ownership on the design of joint delivery routes was determined. It was concluded that, with equal levels of participation and consolidation, overall vehicle traffic can be reduced by consolidating cargo lots belonging not to a single company, but to different commercial enterprises. Therefore, it is important that the services of a city distribution center be used by different retail chains with similar cargo flow characteristics.

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