Coopetitive Urban Logistics to Decrease Freight Traffic and Improve Urban Liveability

Urban space is scarce due to growing population and increased demands for goods, causing additional freight traffic. Private and freight mobility compete for urban space. Collaborative and bundled deliveries from logistics service providers are solutions to reduce freight traffic. Yet, logistics service providers refuse to collaborate with their competitors. This collaboration between competitors is called coopetition. This chapter will show that coopetition can be implemented if the city provides a scarce and valuable resource to logistics service providers and retailers – logistics space in the heart of a city. Cities can provide access to logistics space only to those competitors who collaborate and prove that they reduce the driven kilometers through shared infrastructure and shared delivery vehicles. Cities do not have to implement regulations that force competitors to collaborate but establish a system where collaboration between competitors is established on a voluntarily basis to get access to logistics infrastructure within city centers. The chapter introduces a three-echelon hub system, where the first echelon is in the outskirts of the city, the second is in the city center, and the third is in consumer neighborhoods. Through the provision of this three-echelon hub system to collaborative competitors, the city increases the motivation of competitors to collaborate and reduces the traffic burden of the urban setting.