Urban commercial transport and the future of mobility
Commercial
traffic clogs city streets, contributes to pollution, and drives up the cost of
doing business. But there are many ways to do better.
Cities are the heart of the
global economy, accounting for more than 80 percent of world GDP. Roads, rails,
and other forms of transportation are the arteries that nourish that heart.
When these become clogged or weakened, the results are severe. Businesses,
residents, and cities all suffer, and the economic costs are high—as much as 2
to 4 percent of city GDP, in the form of lost time, wasted fuel, and higher
costs of doing business.
Six
solutions can reduce the cost and pollution of commercial deliveries, and
improve efficiency.
Last year, McKinsey and Bloomberg New Energy Finance
published An integrated
perspective on the future of mobility, which outlined
four trends that are rapidly changing passenger transport: electrification,
autonomy, connectivity, and sharing. The same four trends will, to a large
degree, shape the future of commercial urban transport, which is the focus of
this report. Commercial vehicles (CVs) contribute disproportionately to urban
pollution and congestion. They are more apt to idle, make stops and starts, and
block traffic. In general, they generate higher nitrogen-oxide and other
emissions.
And there will likely be many more CVs on the road,
given economic growth and the expansion of e-commerce (exhibit). Different
solutions are emerging that could relieve the pressure. We
examine six of these in detail, and consider how they can work in three kinds
of urban areas: dense, developed cities like London and Tokyo; sprawling,
developed cities like Los Angeles and Sydney; and dense, developing cities like
Beijing and Mexico City. Autonomous commercial vehicles, for example, will
likely be most attractive at first in places with high labor costs. Drones will
work better in sprawling cities where there is ample space to land. Electric
vehicles (EVs) can and eventually will work everywhere.
The case for change
Traffic is bad, and getting worse. In London, a trip
that took 20 minutes in 2012 takes almost 25 minutes now, while the average
resident of Los Angeles spends the equivalent of more than two full work weeks
in traffic every year. Congestion is not just annoying; it is expensive. When
commercial vehicles get stuck, businesses rack up higher fuel and labor costs.
Improving these conditions will be difficult. By 2030, a
billion more people will live in cities. Spending on infrastructure, on the
other hand, is not keeping pace. To cope, individuals and
businesses are going to have to use roads and other assets better and
be ready to adopt new technologies.
Potential solutions
To improve urban commercial transport, we have
identified solutions all along the delivery value chain. We evaluated each one
for its financial value, social value, and feasibility. A number of these
solutions, such as order grouping, route optimization, and night deliveries,
could be implemented more or less immediately. Others, such as the use of
droids, robots, and autonomous ground vehicles (AGVs), are realistic, but
likely years away from large-scale deployment. Of all the solutions we studied,
two stand out; both already exist but could be deployed much more widely, to
great effect.
Urban consolidation centers (UCCs)
are locations, typically on the outskirts of cities, where deliveries are
brought, sorted, and then dispatched. Goods from multiple suppliers can be
consolidated into fewer shipments, because it is possible to optimize loads and
truck sizes. While UCCs have been around for years, success has been spotty.
Second, night deliveries shift traffic
to off-peak hours; this reduces congestion during the day and allows suppliers
to use bigger trucks, reducing the number of deliveries. In dense, developed
cities, we estimate that shifting to night could speed up commercial deliveries
by half and cut costs by up to 50 percent. For all the potential, though, the
use of night deliveries in cities is limited, largely because of noise
concerns; eventually, the use of EVs could
help because they are quieter—and would also sharply reduce related emissions.
Four other approaches look particularly promising—EVs,
load-pooling, parcel lockers, and AGV lockers—and we discuss these in
depth. We estimate that these six solutions could reduce tailpipe emissions by
up to 30 percent (and eliminate them altogether through electrification) while
also cutting costs per parcel by 25 to 55 percent.
All the solutions make sense in and of themselves; it is
in working together, however, that commercial transport in cities could be
truly transformed. Different combinations work for different kinds of cities,
different customers (B2B versus B2C), and different uses (same-day versus
traditional delivery). For example, using electric vehicles to deliver to and
from UCCs at night optimizes load utilization and speeds up delivery while also
cutting costs and pollution. While we believe these approaches, both alone and
in combination, will be good for the global economy and environment, five
sectors in particular face challenges to their existing revenue and operating
models: retail, logistics, the public sector, automotive,
and energy. If the sectors adapt creatively, however, they could reap
substantial benefits.
Easing the burden of urban traffic will require new
technologies, new business models, and new regulations. But it will also need
new mind-sets—among businesses, governments, and consumers—to imagine a future
that is different and better than the present. For those sitting in traffic or
stuck behind a stopped delivery truck, such irritants may seem as inevitable as
death and taxes. We are more optimistic.
SEPT17
http://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability-and-resource-productivity/our-insights/urban-commercial-transport-and-the-future-of-mobility?cid=other-eml-alt-mip-mck-oth-1709&hlkid=21540a54965c4c0b91f6f9562fef43b8&hctky=1627601&hdpid=2d1b7499-8124-4e17-b80c-61628ed55538
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