IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i20p11375-d656599.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Land Consumption of Delivery Robots and Bicycle Couriers for On-Demand Meal Delivery Using GPS Data and Simulations Based on the Time-Area Concept

Author

Listed:
  • Maren Schnieder

    (The Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK)

  • Chris Hinde

    (The Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK)

  • Andrew West

    (The Wolfson School of Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK)

Abstract

Regulating the curbside usage of delivery vehicles and ride-hailing services as well as micromobility has been a challenge in the last years, a challenge which might worsen with the increase of autonomous vehicles. The contribution of the research outlined in this paper is an evaluation method of the land use of on-demand meal delivery services such as Deliveroo and UberEats. It evaluates the effect parking policies, operating strategy changes, and scheduling options have on the land consumption of bicycle couriers and sidewalk automated delivery robots (SADRs). Various operating strategies (i.e., shared fleets and fleets operated by restaurants), parking policies (i.e., parking at the restaurant, parking at the customer or no parking) and scheduling options (i.e., one meal per vehicle, multiple meals per vehicle) are simulated and applied to New York City (NYC). Additionally, the time-area requirements of on-demand meal delivery services are calculated based on GPS traces of Deliveroo and UberEats riders in two UK cities. The simulation in the paper shows that SADRs can reduce the time-area requirements by half compared with bicycle couriers. The effect of operating strategy changes and forbidding vehicles to park at the customer’s home is small. Delivering multiple meals in one tour halves the time-area requirements. The time-area requirements based on GPS traces is around 300 m 2 ·min per order. The study allows policymakers to learn more about the land use of on-demand meal delivery services and how these can be influenced. Hence, they can adjust their policy strategies to ensure that on-demand meal delivery services are provided in a way that they use land effectively, reduce external costs, improve sustainability and benefit everyone.

Suggested Citation

  • Maren Schnieder & Chris Hinde & Andrew West, 2021. "Land Consumption of Delivery Robots and Bicycle Couriers for On-Demand Meal Delivery Using GPS Data and Simulations Based on the Time-Area Concept," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(20), pages 1-25, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:20:p:11375-:d:656599
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/20/11375/pdf
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/20/11375/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maren Schnieder & Chris Hinde & Andrew West, 2022. "Emission Estimation of On-Demand Meal Delivery Services Using a Macroscopic Simulation," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(18), pages 1-17, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:20:p:11375-:d:656599. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.