Delivering Parcels by Crowdshipping
By Lynette Cheah
If you live in a city, your next parcel could be delivered by a fellow urban resident riding a bus.
In crowded cities, growing demand for e-commerce and urban deliveries is adding to traffic congestion and emissions. How can we leverage existing transport capacity to complete more deliveries in an efficient and sustainable manner? Together with my Ph.D. student, Meijing Zhang, we have been exploring an urban logistics concept called crowdshipping.
Crowdshipping involves contracting members of the public to fulfil parcel deliveries. Instead of using a traditional carrier, we envision a scheme where individuals can be motivated to pick up and drop off parcels, ideally en route along their personal journeys. In particular, we are curious about the feasibility of this concept in an urban setting, tapping on public transport passengers riding buses or trains. In cities with extensive transit systems and high passenger ridership, an opportunity is presented for passengers to hand-carry numerous small parcel deliveries across the transit network. Automated parcel lockers installed along the transit network can serve as mini distribution centres. If crowdshipping is operational during off-peak hours, we can integrate both passenger and freight transport, making use of spare transport capacity in the transit network.
Concept of crowdshipping for urban deliveries
To explore this idea, we considered the feasibility, operational design and potential impacts of crowdshipping. By focusing on the case of e-commerce deliveries in the city of Singapore, we put together real-world parcel delivery data, transit ridership data and geospatial data revealing locations of bus stops and metro stations. First, we conducted a pilot survey among 144 transit passengers to assess their willingness to serve as crowdshippers. A majority (78%) of respondents were keen to participate, especially when offered compensation for the job. Next, we developed an algorithm to match parcels to available passengers considering their origins and destinations. Parcels are then allocated to lockers located along the metro system, to be picked up by passengers.
We found that supplementing conventional van deliveries with crowdshipping using public transport can result in benefits for the carrier in terms of reduced delivery fleet size and around 15% reduction in vehicle kilometres travelled. The carrier will also experience cost savings even when accounting for the cost of compensating crowdshippers. On a per parcel basis, the environmental impact and cost of deliveries will be reduced.
We further explored the idea of prioritising outlier parcels for crowdshipping. Outlier parcels are those with delivery destinations that are located further away from others. It will be costly for a carrier to route their vehicles to these more remote locations just for a few parcels. Outsourcing the delivery of these parcels to crowdshippers might make sense. In the case of Singapore, we found that redirecting 11% of all parcels to be delivered to crowdshippers will result in a greater (20%) reduction in delivery vehicle kilometres travelled, the associated emissions, fleet size and costs.
Cities need new solutions to offer efficient and sustainable urban mobility. The integration of passenger and freight transport offers good potential for more sustainable city logistics operations. By carrying out data-driven transport modelling and simulation, we have a means to explore innovative ideas like crowdshipping and bring these concepts closer to realisation.
Article Details
Prioritizing Outlier Parcels for Public Transport-Based Crowdshipping in Urban Logistics
Meijing Zhang and Lynette Cheah
First published online July 13, 2023
DOI: 10.1177/03611981231182429
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
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