Descrição

Freight transport contributes significantly and increasingly to climate change. In urban areas, goods vehicles contribute to deteriorating public space quality, air quality, and other road users’ safety. In London alone, between 2015 and 2017, vans and HGVs together were involved in 32% of total fatal collisions. The 213,100 vans owned by Londoners, when parked outside, occupy around 2,557,200 sqm of road space, the equivalent of just under twice the size of Hyde Park. The growing demand for home deliveries is predicted to worsen the situation, which will not be contained by shifting to less polluting vehicles alone.

Cargo bikes, having become popular in several cities, can provide an alternative to the current damaging freight transport model which is increasingly relying on delivery vans. This report provides a study of the logistics potential of cargo bikes for urban deliveries. Using GPS data, we compare routes taken by Pedal Me cargo bikes in London with routes that vans would have to take to deliver the same parcels.

We find that the service performed by the Pedal Me freight cycles is an average of 1.61 times faster than the one performed by van. Moreover, in the 98 days of work sampled, Pedal Me helped save a total of 3,896 Kg of CO2 and over 5.5 kg of NOx, showing that cargo bikes can serve their customers better than a van without generating many of the externalities currently associated with urban freight