URBAN CONSOLIDATION CENTRES: INSTRUMENTS AND OBJECTIVES

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URBAN CONSOLIDATION CENTRES:

INSTRUMENTS AND OBJECTIVES

Master’s Thesis

Msc. Double Degree in Operations Management and

Supply Chain Management

Author:

H. Eertink

S2198797

B5061870

Supervisor:

Dr. W. M. C. van Wezel

University of Groningen

Faculty Economics&Business

Second Supervisor

Dr. Gu Pang

University of Newcastle

Newcastle University Business School

Date

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Abstract

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1. Introduction

1.1 Research Background

In recent decades, people have been moving more and more to urban areas. This trend is called urbanization. According to the United Nations, 30% of the worlds’ population lived in urban areas in 1950. This number grew to 54% in 2014 and is expected to hit 66% in 2050 (Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2014). This urbanization means that people live together in a location distant from their sources of food and raw materials (Ogden, 1992). Due to their increasing populations, cities have an increasing need of resources, which requires more transport from the sources of food and raw materials to the city. The current methods of transporting freight, especially in the cities, is seen as negative because of their environmental footprint. Anderson et al. (2005, derived from Anon 1996) also identified economic impacts like traffic congestion, inefficiency and waste of resources as a result of the current methods. They also mentioned social impacts, like public health, traffic accidents and noise. This comes together with the sustainability problems of this century, concerning the triple bottom line: people, planet and profit.

One way to reduce the negative impacts of the current system is to improve its efficiency. Marcucci and Danielis (2008) suggest that consolidating freight on the edge of the city and transporting them into the city in one vehicle can reduce these negative impacts. These consolidation centres will be referred to as urban consolidation centres (UCC). These UCCs will be the main topic of this thesis and will be explained more in depth in the background section.

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1.2 Objective

The motive for writing this thesis is the rising problem in the city of Groningen, The Netherlands. Groningen is a city which are continuously growing. This Dutch city in the north of the Netherlands has approximately 200.000 inhabitants and is estimated to grow by 11% in the next 20 years (Simon, 2016). With this growth, the city will face the aforementioned freight transportation problems. To handle these problems, the city council has chosen to look into setting up a UCC. Anand, van Duin et al. (2012) performed a literature review on urban freight models that should improve urban logistics. They found a knowledge gap on how various measures to handle urban logistics affect the objectives determined for urban logistics.

This thesis will help to fill this gap by researching urban logistics on UCC level. With this information, future operators of UCCs will be able to make more informed decisions on which measures to apply when setting up and operating a UCC. This thesis will help the city of Groningen and other initiators set up their UCCs more effectively and increase their chances of survival, as a lot of UCC initiatives fail. This is done by using grounded theory. Data is gathered from interviews with operators of UCCs, municipalities and an archive. This results theory that helps new UCCs by making more informed and thus better decisions.

1.3 Structure

This thesis is structured in seven chapters, which are divided into several sections. The second chapter is the literature review, which discusses the existing literature on the topic of urban consolidation centres. It starts with a broad introduction on urban logistics that will be narrowed down to the actual topic of this thesis, the urban consolidation centre. After providing some background on this phenomenon, the objectives that are mentioned in the literature are discussed. These objectives are from urban logistics in general, but also from the perspective of the potential operators of a UCC. Next, the instruments for achieving these objectives are discussed. These instruments are divided into six categories: regulations and restrictions, location, pricing, technology and vehicles. As the last part of the literature review, the indicators of the objectives are discussed.

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2. Literature Review

In this thesis, the relations between the different actions an operator of a UCC undertakes and the objectives are explored. In the literature review, the current literature background on this topic is explored. It will start with the broad topic of urban logistics, which contains separate solutions for the problems that are mentioned in the introduction. This will be narrowed down to the solution that will be discussed in this research: an urban consolidation centre (UCC). This solution is introduced in Section 2.2.

2.1 Urban Logistics

As can be seen from the introduction, it is important for the future and safety of cities to improve the way they plan their urban logistics. The interest in this topic started around 1970 with the focus on the safety issues surrounding heavy trucks inside cities. But no real research was conducted on the issue until 1990, when authorities and researchers started to pay attention to the increasing logistics problems in the cities. This came following the increasing interest in the environmental impact of heavy vehicles.(Allen et al., 2012) This attention resulted in solutions such as vehicle access restrictions and consolidation centres (Kohler, 2004, derived from Anand, van Duin et al. 2012). Since 2000, the continuation of the urban freight problems increased the popularity of this field of research among agencies, researchers, companies and even environmentalists (Anand, van Duin et al., 2012). The studies were intended to gather more knowledge on urban logistics to support the decision making processes regarding new initiatives. Countries all over the world participated in these studies, but every country perceives their problems in different ways, which resulted in a wide variety of approaches to the same problems and, therefore, different solutions. The two main objectives found in the studies were: revitalizing the city to improve its economy and removing the harmful effects of delivery vehicles (Anand, van Duin et al., 2012). The literature provides many of possibilities to improve urban logistics. Anand, van Duin et al. (2012, derived from Browne et al., 2007) classifies these ‘’solutions’’ into three categories: policy, planning and technology.

 Policy: The model implements policy measures (e.g., regulations on truck weight)

 Planning: The model analyses and implements planning decisions (e.g., unloading sites)

 Technology: The model implements and analyses a technology and its effects on urban freight movements (e.g., intelligent transport systems)

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2.2 Urban Consolidation Centre

Before the combinations of the instruments and objectives of UCCs are explained, what a UCC is, must be defined and explained.

Mcdermott and Robeson (1974) were among the first researchers to write about solving the problems of city congestion and air pollution by consolidation of pick-up and delivery operations through a central warehouse. They conducted a simulation where every delivery up to 5000 pounds would go through this central warehouse and came up with very promising results. In the simulation, the number of vehicles, distance travelled and transit times were all reduced by at least 90% compared to the current situation. This sounds promising, but unfortunately later research showed that it is next to impossible to consolidate all the freight as they simulated. But this ‘’central warehouse’’ was one of the first ideas for what would later be called an urban consolidation centre.

One of the most elaborate reports on UCCs comes from the university of Westminster. The report was commissioned by the Department for Transport (DfT). Browne et al. (2005) wrote this report to identify the potential for development of UCCs. They say the key purpose of UCCs is to avoid the need for vehicles to deliver partial loads into urban centres. This can be achieved by setting up facilities where freight can be consolidated and shipped from the centre in an appropriate vehicle. UCCs can have a lot of different names, including public distribution depot, central freight sorting point or urban transhipment centre. Browne et al. (2005) describes a UCC as “a logistics facility that is situated in relatively close proximity to the geographic area that it serves be that a city centre, an entire town or a specific site (e.g., shopping centre), from which consolidated deliveries are carried out within that area”.

In their article about the UCC of #####, van Rooijen and Quak (2010) give more attention to the impacts of a UCC in their definition:

“The idea of city consolidation centre initiatives is to separate the distribution activities in activities inside the city and outside the city. Transhipping at the city border makes it possible to benefit from the advantages of large vehicles for long haul transport outside the city without having the disadvantages in the urban area, such as pollution, inconvenience and traffic safety risks. After transhipment at a consolidation centre, smaller trucks transport the freight to outlets in the city. An extra advantage is that the small trucks can be fully loaded in the consolidation centre, which results in a minimum number of vehicles entering the city. However, it might take more small vehicles to replace the large vehicles, which could increase the number of vehicles in the city”.

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11 As mentioned in the definition of van Rooijen and Quak (2010) a UCC has advantages for growing cities, but there are also some issues that can occur with a UCC. Browne et al. (2005) mentions, for instance, the potential high setup costs and high operating costs. Additionally, the current intra-company consolidation of freight (for instance DHL, parcel deliverer) or lack of enforcement of regulations for vehicles not in make it hard to start a UCC. Although SUGAR (2011) does not mention the reasons why 145 UCCs failed. Browne et al. (2005) also reviewed a number of these initiatives, and came up with these reasons. These reasons are also a part of this research, because they prevent the UCC for reaching their objectives. To examine the research already conducted on this topic, several instruments mentioned in the literature are discussed after the objectives. Instruments are the possibilities for decisions an operator has to establish and operate a UCC.

2.3 Objectives

In this section, the objectives of urban logistics are discussed as well as the objectives of the operators or initiators. These are similar to the objectives mentioned in the introduction. It is the objective of this thesis to examine how the various instruments affect the stated objectives. To have a good understanding of this phenomenon, it is important to comprehend the objectives. Anand, Quak et al. (2012) state that: ‘’according to Ogden (1992) city logistics has the overall objective to reduce the social costs of urban movement’’. In his book, Ogden divides this objective into six intertwined categories: economy, efficiency, safety, environment, infrastructure and management, and urban structure. The rest of this section describes these categories. Ogden's book is already quite old, but current literature often referencing it shows that it is still a relevant and can be seen as seminal work.

Economy

Ogden (1992) explains that an efficient urban freight system can contribute to regional or national economic growth and employment, especially to the extent that it assists trade-competitive firms to be more competitive. This category is also an important subject for the objectives of a UCC. As explained in the introduction, Anderson et al. (2005) mentioned economic impacts for growing cities like congestion, inefficiency and resource waste. According to Browne et al. (2005), one of the objectives of a UCC can be to reduce the amount of traffic.

Efficiency

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Safety

Safety is a general humanitarian concern. In this case it is about the safety of the people from the trucks that are going in and out of the city (Ogden, 1992). For example, the number of accidents with these trucks affects the safety of the city’s population. Another example in the safety category is designing the roads to enable the trucks to drive safely from the UCC into the city.

Environment

The environmental objective can sometimes be hard to measure. Whereas the noise, air pollution and vibration can be measured, people’s perceptions of trucks is hard to measure. Another aspect are the responsibilities of the community. Ogden (1992) relates the infrastructure and management objectives to the responsibilities that the community as a whole has for various elements of the urban freight tasks. These include maintenance and taxes. Operating a UCC can, for instance, be funded from taxes, which the community will pay for a safer and more environmentally aware operation of urban freight. The noise, air pollution and vibration will also lessen with a UCC (Browne et al., 2005).

Infrastructure and Management

This is an important category in which the government can regulate and make a business case for a UCC, this means for a UCC to be profitable. This is needed for a UCC, because normally the urban logistics market will not change on its own. In this category, the government can exert its influence through, for example, regulations, taxation and pricing controls. Also, the relation between construction, maintenance of the roads and the freight sector can be explored by the municipality.

Urban Structure

Urban structure objectives are defined as: ‘’The final set of objectives for urban freight policy relate to the interaction between freight facilities and urban structure’’(Ogden, 1992). A city that does not allow the inflow of food, energy and raw materials can not exist, which is why the structure of the city must facilitate such movements; the same holds for the outflow of products (Ogden, 1992). A UCC can also have a positive influence on this objective by making the roads less congested and better organizing the deliveries to the city.

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2.4 The Operator

There is the question of who the operator of the UCC is. This is very important because a municipality as an operator will have different objectives than a shopkeeper as operator, also the motive for starting an UCC is important for the objectives. Anderson et al. (2005) introduces two different groups that can change the urban freight system: Companies and controlling forces.

The former means that the initiative for an UCC comes from a commercial organization. This can be transporters of freight, shopkeepers or any person who sees the opportunity for a business case in a UCC. Browne et al. (2005) say that the initiator must be able to control all the stakeholders, that is, to able to force stakeholders in doing what the initiator wants. The advantage of shopkeepers initiating a UCC is that there will probably be a high degree of participation by the other shopkeepers, which is necessary for a successful UCC (van Duin et al., 2010). The same with transporters. At the airport London Heathrow the initiating party is the landlord BAA(British Aviation Authority) who forces the shopkeepers to use the UCC, this is also a possibility with for instance shopping malls(Browne et al., 2007).

The latter, the controlling force, is about the (local) governments that can use certain instruments and policies to become more environmentally and socially efficient. An example of how that did not work out can be found in the next section (Villea et al., 2013). Most of the initiatives for an UCC come from the government, but are operated by non-governmental organizations. These can be new organizations or existing ones that add a UCC as to their business, like DHL in Bristol, UK (van Duin et al., 2010).

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2.5 The Instruments

Now that the objectives of the operators and initiators and the general objectives of the UCC have been discussed, it is important to select the right kind of instruments to achieve these objectives (Kaszubowski, 2016). In this thesis, the instruments mean the different possibilities a UCC have for its decisions. Only decisions specific for a UCC are discussed here (e.g., the decision on how many employees are needed in a warehouse is not discussed) because the other fall outside of the scope for this research. The possibilities meant include decisions on locations, vehicles or funding. The selection of instruments depends on the different objectives that come with starting a UCC and, therefore, on the initiator and operator (Kaszubowski, 2016).

In 2008, the SUGAR Initiative started with the goal ’to enhance capabilities in terms of infrastructure and design for urban mobility through the efficiency of a freight transport system’. It tried to do this through a network of cities that exchanged experience, knowledge and good practices. This initiative resulted in a ‘Best Practices’ handbook, which functions as the start of this literature review. This handbook was chosen because it provides a suitable overview of many initiatives. In this book, 44 initiatives are reviewed and discussed (SUGAR, 2011). These initiatives were filtered by the researcher to leave the 12 initiatives that included a UCC. All the instruments from these initiatives were written down. To present these instruments in a clear fashion, they will be categorized into six categories: regulations and restrictions, location, pricing, technology, and vehicles. These instruments provide insight into the possible actions an initiator can do. In the following subsections each category is described using examples derived from the literature. After categorizing the instruments from SUGAR (2011), the list of instruments was completed using other literature that contained relevant instruments. This because there were some instruments mentioned which were not in the SUGAR handbook.. These instruments were then also put into the categories.

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Regulations and Restrictions

This category includes all the possible instruments the authorities can enforce in cities. Russo and Comi (2010) define two types of authorities who can have this role: the local government and the national government. Tennøy (2010) states that the most important factor for a municipality is neutrality in its relationships with different stakeholders, and this should be the motivation for a municipality to be the ‘’leader’’ of such a project. But this also means that the municipality must retain this neutral status and can’t favour anyone. An important case about this was learnt in Vicenza, Italy by Villea et al. (2013). They researched what restrictions on vehicles and limited traffic zones can be enacted without it being an abuse of power. They state that in whatever form a UCC takes, the effectiveness of an UCC seems to be heavily dependent of the presence of the right regulations. Some examples of regulations and restrictions are:

 Multi-use lanes (Balm et al., 2014; Leonardi et al., 2014)

 Night-time deliveries (Browne et al., 2005; Russo & Comi, 2010)

 Limited operating hours (SUGAR, 2011)

 Time windows (Lindholm, 2012)

 Truck dimensions (Lindholm, 2012).

 Low emission zones (van Rooijen & Quak, 2010).

 Road pricing (Holguín-Veras, 2008)

 Building regulations (SUGAR, 2011).

 Environmental zones ((Quak & de Koster, 2009)

Location

This category involves the location of a UCC, with consideration towards the service area, highways and accessibility. The size and number of UCCs are also considered in this category. To achieve maximum efficiency, and thus success, of a UCC, the UCC must be built at the right location (Browne et al. 2007; Allen et al. 2007). Issues to take into account when deciding the right location of a UCC include:

 Transporters, who have to deliver to the UCC (Olsson & Woxenius, 2012)

 Service area. For instance, the UCC should not be too far from the highway (van Duin et al., 2010).

Funds

The income of a UCC depends on potential funding from the government or other institutions and the pricing of their main service, delivering freight, which depends on the types of freight and the potential services that are being offered besides deliveries, for instance, storage of freight. The following are the instruments mentioned in the literature:

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 Payments for UCC service (Browne et al., 2005; Chwesiuk et al., 2010)

 Additional services (van Rooijen & Quak, 2010)

Information Technology

This category includes the computer systems, which are mainly used to optimize the routes. This is, however, relatively the same as ‘normal’ optimization for routes, so only the dedicated UCC literature in combination with these systems is discussed in this part. This category is only about information technology. Other technologies, for instance, electric trucks, will be considered in the next category. According to Browne et al. (2007) there is a big opportunity for information systems to improve the efficiency of logistics operations, but this opportunity was mainly for traditional transport, not for UCCs. Despite this, information technology has advantages for a UCC. Using tracing systems, the freight is easier to follow during the supply chain. This may allay the fear of the transporters of losing control over the freight and lower a barrier of working with a UCC (Quak, 2012).

Vehicles

This category is about the vehicles used by UCCs to bring their consolidated freight to their service area. It is already known that the growing numbers of trucks has a negative influence on the environment, such as noise nuisance and air pollution (Browne et al., 2007). This air pollution is also the main reason for the aforementioned environment zones. The idea behind most of the vehicle types associated with a UCC is to be good to the environment. The most common vehicle for a UCC is a truck or a van, but not with a normal petrol or diesel fuel as energy source, instead they vehicles use natural gas or electricity. The different types of vehicles are:

 Electric (van Rooijen & Quak, 2010)

 Alternative fuel (van Duin et al., 2010)

 Bicycles (van Rooijen & Quak, 2010; Diziain et al., 2012)

 Infrastructure dependent (Boat, tram) (Crainic et al., 2009; Browne et al., 2012)

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2.6 Indicators

To achieve the objectives, it is important to know how the objectives are measured and evaluated. This is done by looking at different indicators of the objectives. In their paper on how to evaluate a UCC, Patier and Browne (2010) set up a framework for properly evaluating cities to make it possible to compare them with each other. In this framework, they divided the potential objectives into three categories: economy, social and environment, and added indicators to see how well these cities performed. Because not every indicator has the same weight for the evaluation, they were also classified into essential (core) or non-essential (additional). The problem with this evaluation is that some data may not be available, so that it is not possible for these cities to get a score. But this article can help with rating future implementations of UCC initiatives, because now it is known which data should be gathered and which variables should be considered. In the next table, which indicators Patier and Browne identified as core or additional indicators are shown. This information will help determine whether the objectives that are determined for that UCC are being met.

Table 1: Indicators(Patier & Browne, 2010)

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3. Methodology

This section describes the method used in this research. It first states the goal of this thesis then introduces the method. At the end, the procedure is described.

3.1 Goal

The goal of this research is to develop a model that can link the instruments to objectives set for an urban consolidation centre. Currently, most UCCs fail. To prevent such failures, this research will help new and potential UCCs make the right decisions to increase their chance of survival. To achieve this, information is needed from the cities that have attempted to improve their urban freight movement and find out how the instruments they implemented relate to their objectives and results. To collect this information, this research uses the grounded theory method.

3.2 Grounded Theory

Grounded theory is a method wherein the data is fundamental to develop the model. With traditional methods, a theoretical framework is made and data is collected to test this framework. The grounded theory method differs from this approach by starting with the data. A model is then developed using patterns and concepts that become apparent from the data.

Grounded theory is intended to create theories that originate from real-world situations: ’’The methodology grew from a view, that because the grand theories developed by “armchair theorists” could not be empirically tested, a less abstract levelof theory (called “middle range” theory) was needed’’ (Oktay, 2012). Because grounded theory creates theories that are derived directly from real-world settings, it creates theories that can be used in practice. In fact, when grounded theory was developed, the authors intended for it to be a cooperative venture between researchers and practitioners to test and adapt the theory in practical situations (Oktay, 2012).

3.3 Why grounded theory:

As mentioned before in the introduction, this research continues on the research gap identified by Anand, Quak et al. (2012). This author conducted research in the field of urban logistics and identified that there is not much understanding about the relation between the objectives and measures. This research is especially focussed on the field of UCC within the field of urban logistics. The fact that there is a lack of understanding justifies using grounded theory according to the theory of Birks and Mills (2011). They suggest three types of instances in which grounded theory is appropriate:

 Little is known about the area of study

 The generation of a theory with explanatory power is a desired outcome

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19 The first reason for using grounded theory is that UCC initiatives keep on failing. This suggests that the current literature doesn’t fully comprehend what is going on in this field of study. Therefore, a new approach is required that doesn’t rely on the perhaps wrong ideas of the current literature.

Continuing on the Birks and Mills (2011) theory, the aim of this research is to show how different actions influence the objectives of the initiator. This research will also contain information that explains these influences, which conforms with the second point.

The third point is the main argument for using the grounded theory method in this research. To gain full understanding of the influences between actions and objectives, one could ask for these actions and objectives to the supervisor of an UCC. But the researcher believes that there may be some underlying influences that will not directly be mentioned by the person interviewed. This is one of the reasons is why other methods won’t be sufficient for this research. Also, using conventional models will mean using possibly faulty theory. With the grounded theory, this research will start with fresh data, which will increase the chance of recognizing underlying influences.

3.4 Procedure:

Generating data

The first step of grounded theory is the generation of F. Glaser (1998) states that ‘’all is data’’. Although this statement is heavily criticized for its vagueness, it recognizes the potential of other data sources besides the standard methods. Note that in this research involves generating data, not collecting data. Collecting data would mean that the data already exists, such as transcripts which were used for previous research.

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20 Interviews are going to be held at several cities that tried, successfully or not, to set up a UCC. The interviewees were from the organization of the UCCs and from the municipalities. These are The interviewees from the municipality were involved with the UCC and the interviewees from the organizations were in a management position. These different perspectives provide a good view on the objectives and impacts of the UCCs. The initial contact with these people will be laid by mail or telephone. First, the context of the study was explained. Once it is clear that the person contacted is the right person to interview (this will be determined based on the initial contact), an appointment for an interview will be made. Because the supervisors of the organization are easier to find than the appropriate civil workers, the supervisors are asked who the responsible person at the municipality is. These civil servants are then contacted to determine whether they were the right people.

Data will also be collected from a city where the UCC project failed a couple of years ago, but the city still has an archive of this project. Because this city has a big influence on the project, it is considered useful to also go into those archives for data.

Analysing data

After generating the data, it must be analysed. In grounded theory, there are two rules in this step: First, everything is a concept, which is very similar in the saying that everything is data. The second rule is that data analysis needs to be conducted in relation to the research aims (Birks & Mills, 2011). With these rules, the transcripts were coded according to these rules to identify reoccurrences and similarities of topics between the different participants (Birks & Mills, 2011). Groupings of this coding form a higher level concept category, in which all the data of a topic will be gathered. In this coding step, it is important to try to not to link the data directly to a certain theory. As Glaser and Strauss (1967) state: ’Of course, the researcher does not approach reality as a tabula rasa (clean sheet). He must have a perspective that will help him see relevant data and abstract significant categories from his scrutiny of the data.’ The analysing of the data is divided in three parts: initial coding, intermediate coding and identifying a core category, these will be explained next.

The initial coding is performed using line by line, as advised by Glaser (1978). There are three points to think about when analysing the data (Strauss & Corbin, 1990, in Birks & Mills, 2011):

1. There are conditions – why, where, how and what happens? 2. There are interactions, actions and emotions

3. There are consequences – of interactions, actions and emotions

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21 After the initial coding, the intermediate coding can start. The initial coding results in a large number of codes that need organizing. In the intermediate coding, the codes are grouped, which results in the categories as the researcher begins to identify explanatory, conceptual patterns in their analysis.(Birks & Mills, 2011) These categories need to be defined and explained to create conceptual depth.

An important point in this phase is theoretical saturation. Strauss and Corbin define theoretical saturation as: ‘’what occurs when there are no new codes identified in later rounds of data generation or collection that pertain to a particular category, and the category is conceptually well developed to the point where any sub-categories and their properties or dimensions are clearly articulated and integrated’’ (Birks & Mills, 2011).

Next a core category must be identified. A core category is the heart of the grounded theory analyses. Glaser (2007) states that a core category is generalizable: ’It has a grab; it is often a high impact dependent variable of great importance; it is hard to resist; it happens automatically with ease. Researchers tend to see their core category everywhere’. The core category is selected when the researcher can trace connections between a frequently occurring variable and all the other categories. The next step is to look for the relations between the core categories that emerged from the data. This can be done with help of Spradley's (1979) semantic relationships, which gives a couple of examples for relationships, or from the researcher’s own creativity. This will depend on the data.

3.5 Research Quality

It is important to make sure that this research will be conducted correctly. Birks and Mills (2011) give three factors that influence the quality of performing grounded theory:

 Researcher expertise

It is important that the researcher has an open mind and is willing to learn from the grounded theorists who contributed to the literature. The researcher also needs to have a positive attitude towards the research, affinity for the topic area and a commitment to achieving quality outcomes (Birks & Mills, 2011). The researcher has voluntarily chosen this topic from a pool of topic and finds it very interesting. This thesis is also the last part of my studies, and I am determined to achieve something with it and learn something from it.

 Methodological congruence

Methodological congruence happens when there is an accordance between: o The researcher’s personal philosophical position

o The stated aims of the research

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22 To keep an open view during this research, the researcher must start with a clean sheet in comparison to the topic. Although it is hard to test this, the researcher must not be biased when analysing the data.

 Procedural precision

To ensure procedural precision, attention must be paid to: o Maintaining an audit trail

o Managing data and resources o Demonstrating procedural logic

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4. Results

As explained in the methodology section, the data for this research was gathered using open interviews. These interviews were held with multiple organizations which operate a UCC. Two of the interviews were hold at a UCC franchise (Appendix B, interview 1 and 2), one was held at a UCC that was part of a sheltered workplace organisation (Appendix B, interview 3) and the last one was held at a UCC that was part of a big parcel delivery company (Appendix B, interview 5). There was also an interview with a civil servant to provide the perspective of a municipality in the research (Appendix B, interview 4). Although these interviews were open interviews, a checklist of questions was used to make sure all the relevant topics (the objectives and instruments) were discussed. These questions were only used to get the conversation going. The list of questions is provided in Appendix E and the interview transcripts can be found in Appendix B. The interviews were conducted in Dutch, to enable the interviewees to speak easily and freely. The coding was also performed in Dutch, and only the results were translated to English. Next to these sources, the researcher also used the archives of Leyden, a city that had implemented a UCC 15 years ago, which made it one of the first UCC initiatives in The Netherlands. This was an interesting opportunity to learn about the objectives and instruments at the first UCC in The Netherlands. This information and how it was processed can be found in Appendix C.

After the interviews were conducted, the transcripts were put in one Word document for analysis. Next, the line-by-line coding started. In this process, all the useful data was coded and put together based on topics which came up during the interviews. When a line of data did not fit to a certain topic, a new topic was created for it. This way all the data was put into topics. With this analysis, ten topics were created. These ten topics were the initial categories and an overview can be found in Appendix A. Because a category consists of several types of line which are about the same topic, but are not explicitly the same, subcategories were created. A list with the categories, subcategories a quotes can be found in Appendix D, where also will be explained why there was chosen for. Based on the data, there were four categories that emerged as core categories. Before characterizing them core categories, the researcher determined whether some categories could be put together. Several categories were put together; this will be explained when these categories will be discussed.

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Figure 1: UCC as it is supposed to work with the core categories

4.1 Core Categories

During the analysis, a number of categories that influenced a UCC became clear. After carefully analysing and combining the categories in the data, four core categories emerged that have a major influence on an UCC: municipality, participants, funds and operator, as are also shown in the figure. There is no specific order of importance because there is there is a lot of interaction between these categories, making them all equally important. The main problems of a UCC will become clear when the relations will be discussed.

Municipality

First the municipality is discussed, as this category can be identified as the ‘’game-changer’’. This category is divided in four subcategories: support, rules, enforcement and other, which will each be discussed. ‘’The government is the game changer by creating clearness on: “this is how we are going to change, you take care of it”, and this way new opportunities emerge.’’ Appendix B, interview 5

The first subcategory support means the non-monetary support coming from the municipality towards a UCC. The monetary support is called subsidy, and will be discussed in the funds category. These are a number of ways a municipality can provide support to a UCC, with respect to the market which has to be equal for everybody. This is why the civil servant says that they, as municipality, will not try to set up a UCC.

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25 One of the possibilities mentioned in the archives is to let the vehicles of an UCC make use of the bus lanes towards the inner city, to prevent getting them stuck in traffic. Also one kind of support is to engage the operator of the UCC in conversations about improving the urban logistics, which results in publicity among potential participants. One other kind of support is the municipality making use of the UCC itself. This is mentioned three times by the respondents, who found it odd that the UCC did not participate in their practices.

The next possibility for a municipality to influence the success of a UCC is through imposing rules which cause the urban logistics market to change. The municipality can have a very big impact on an urban logistics market because of its ability to impose rules and regulations on the market.

These rules can be environmental bound, with can forbid trucks with certain air pollution levels to enter streets or possibly forbid any kind of air pollution levels, this is called an environmental zone. The most mentioned rule is the time zones, which allows transporters to only enter the city between two points of time, usually in the morning. One of the issues of these time zones comes up when a transporter has more deliveries in the city, but is not able to deliver within the time zones with one truck, so the transporter sends two trucks, which results in more traffic movements, pollution and congestion. Also are the end-receivers tempted to open their shops later, because the trucks in the city during the morning will not bring any customers. But opening the shops later will result in more stress on the planning of the transporters, who will perhaps send more trucks to the city.

The success of these rules depends on how the municipality enforces these rules. This is one of the most heard complaints on the municipalities from the operators of the UCCs. Example of this was given in interview 5, where the municipality promised to close the inner city for traffic within the year, which created the possibility for an UCC. So an UCC was started, but one year later nothing of this happened, which resulted in the operator pulling the plug on the UCC.

’When we came here because they [the municipality] said that the inner city would be closed (for freight traffic) in one year, this made the case interesting for us. But they didn’t, which made our business an inefficient process. That is why we stopped.’’ Appendix B, interview 5

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26

Participants

The second category is the participants. These are usually commercial organizations that are customers of the UCC. Three types of participants could be identified. The first is the end-receivers of the freight, who will participate in a UCC by changing their delivery addresses to the address of the UCC. These are also the customers of most of the additional services which will be mentioned in the funds category.

‘’This local customer base, the local entrepreneurs, are very important for the continuity, we have actually said this from the beginning: You have to be bottom-up’’ Appendix B, interview 1

When the receivers order their goods the price includes almost always the delivery to the end-receiver. This way the end-receivers do not have the risk of transporting the goods themselves. This causes the fact that the end-receivers do not want to pay for the service, because they have already paid for the delivery, so why should they pay twice? This makes it hard to get the end-receivers to participate. ‘’Only this is driven by end-receivers. Physically it will work, and if money would not play a role, the problem would already be solved.‘’ Appendix B, interview 1

One other option is to have some big end-receivers, like university or schools with different locations, these can be the enablers for the little shop to participate for a smaller fee. One other option of the end-receivers came forward through an example with garbage collection, where whole streets decided to have only one company as collector, this way there would also only be one truck in the street, and not 5 of different companies. Perhaps this is also possible with suppliers or transporters.

The second group are the transporters that have freight going into the city. They can participate by delivering their freight for the inner city at the UCC, which will transport it for them into the city. The transporter also does not want to pay, because it already has low margins and does not want to sacrifice a piece of its revenue. The transport sector is also very conservative and distrustful.

‘’ … if you know the transport sector, you will know that they are very conservative and do not grant each other business. … They do not trust each other, which makes collaboration quite hard.’’ Appendix B, interview 3

Also, the transporters are afraid to lose touch with the customers and wary about the responsibility issue in cases of delays or broken parcels.

‘’For the disappointing results up till now, following reasons can be mentioned:

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27 The last issue with the transporter is the resistance to change their system for only one, two or three deliveries in the city. They think it is easier to just deliver them to the address on the label instead of determining to deliver them to the UCC

The last group are the suppliers (Appendix B, interview 1). This group is the most recent group to come into the scope of urban consolidation. They can participate in a UCC by ordering the transporters to deliver the freight to the UCC instead of the inner city. In several of the interviews came forward that the suppliers may be the participant of the future.

‘’The most important lessons we have learned is that, in all perspectives, more profit can be made by focussing on the suppliers of freight instead of the receivers’’ Appendix B, interview 2

When one operator asked some years ago, the supplier did not want to work together with UCCs, because it would receive invoices of all the UCCs of different cities. This could cause the supplier to lose overview of its supply chain.

Furthermore, there are in this categories some general mentions about what would be shipped. Some do everything, from envelope to pallets, but there are also UCCs with requirements like smaller than 1m3, not dirty, fresh or tedious. Most of the UCCs started with only business to business transport, but are now switched to also do business to consumer. In which e-commerce plays a big role, which will be discussed in the operators category.

Funds

The third category, funds, comprehends all the ways a UCC can make money. The first source of funds are payments from the participants. This source can also be divided into two sources: payments for the consolidation of the freight and delivery and payments for additional services. Additional services was at first a category on its own, but because this was also a source of money, it was decided to add it to the funds category. There are several reasons for an UCC to offer additional services. The main argument is the money, which helps the UCC to be profitable. But also the use of overcapacity and the extra flow of traffic that is reduced plays a role in this decision.

‘’We have additional services, without it, we wouldn’t exist anymore’’ Appendix B, interview 1

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28 The next service is also offered by all the interviewed operators of the UCCs. This is the collecting of the reverse flow goods. When a UCC delivers freight to the shops, it will have empty space going back to the UCC. This empty space will then be filled with recyclables or even waste, resulting in the fact that there will not be any trucks going into the city to collect these recyclables or waste. Also when this is collected nearly every day there is not a necessity for a big area of disposables in the shop. Other services as unpacking for end-receivers, so they won’t have to do it their selves and will not have any packaging material in their shops, are also offered by all the UCCs. One UCC also offered the service to deliver from the shop to the customer, for example fridges or other big appliances. This is a small success, but because the shopkeepers are still quite short on money, it is hard to make it a success.

The other source of money from the participants was for the service of consolidating the goods and delivering them to the end receivers. As mentioned before, none of the three types of participants are actually willing to pay for this service. Although there is one UCC who claimed to cover their cost with the consolidation service.

‘’we also have carriers that bring goods, which we then deliver to the city, this service is cost effective. As the concept of our UCC started, as a service towards the shop that's definitely a loss running activity.'' Appendix B, interview 2

The question remains who has the biggest profit of this service, which will be the community, because a UCC is the solution to several social issues.

‘’When you just put a fair cost-benefit balance over the entire supply chain, it is very obvious that nobody is going to pay, it's just a very different arrangement of the supply chain‘’. Appendix B, interview 1

The objectives of a municipality are usually improved air quality, less congestion and improved safety. When these municipalities see that a UCC can help achieve these objectives, the municipality may decide to subsidize a UCC.

‘’You just want your stuff, come on, you want to get it on time. That's the only concern you have. And you will pay for that. And for the other things, cleaner town, less trucks, you have an interest, but it may not cost money’’. Appendix B, interview 3

‘’You need receiving customers. But what about that last mile, how are you going to recover the costs? Well those costs may be social costs, but you won’t see that courage to pay for it at the government’’ Appendix B, interview 5

The other source of funds is from the municipality. This is usually a relatively small amount of money provided to get the UCC started. A UCC qualifies for such a subsidy when they are helping the municipality to achieve its goals.

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29 With the help of the subsidy, the municipality makes the survival of the UCC possible. None of the UCCs in the data were set up without the help of the municipality. But usually a municipality does not have very specific objectives with this subsidy. In one case, the UCC needed a certain number (100) of end-receiver participants and in another case the UCC only needed to make a report on how much they reduced traffic in the city. In the case of number of end-receiver participants, did this objective have some negative influences. Due to the target of 100 participants, the UCC decided to offer their service for free, just to be able to get the subsidy. This resulted in problems of participants not willing to pay when the subsidy stops. Also, the size of the subsidy was not related to the degree of achieving the objectives (e.g., air quality).

‘’No there was no such distribution of the subsidy. We just got a general subsidy which we had to answer for. We made an extensive report on the number of traffic movements we caught at the edge of the city’’ Appendix B, interview 2

Two of the UCCs received money from the European Union to buy their electric trucks, but also with this subsidy were no objectives given.

All the UCCs are implicitly claiming that they are having a hard time surviving due to a lack of funds. This does distract them sometimes from their goals to improve the air quality, liveability and remove the congestion.

‘’In most cases it really reduces truck traffic in the city, and are you really concerned for the objective for which you are there, but it [the lack of funds] also distracts a bit. But it does mean that you need to recover the costs, in particular the fixed costs, hub and crew.’’ Appendix B, interview 1

The operator

The final core category is the operator. This refers to the person or organization that operates the UCC, which is possibly also the person or organization to initiate the UCC. The decisions on how to operate the UCC also fit into this core category. This gave space to fit more categories in this core category, like combination company, which is the possibility of operating the UCC and combining it with another, already existing, organization, for instance a courier. This gives the advantage of spreading the costs over multiple organizations. Also, the vehicles of this UCC can be deployable for both organizations.

‘’…also got vehicles which we can deploy on a wide array of activities, not only for the UCC but also for our ‘normal’ courier work’’ Appendix B, interview 2

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30 ‘’If you can’t combine your inner city activities[UCC] with other activities, you need a warehouse, forklift, personnel, you name and calculate it, it will not function on its own yet’’ Appendix B, interview 2

Another option for working in combination with a different company are the sheltered workplaces, which is very popular among the UCCs. One of the main reasons for this are the relatively cheap employees, for which subsidy will be provided.

‘’It is a good activity for people with a distance to the labour market, and those people can do this job perfectly fine. Some have a physical disability and some mental, but if you put those two together you can have a fine one you know.’’ Appendix B, interview 3

‘’… but we receive subsidy for those employees, and that is where I [operator] gets paid from. We still have to charge for the service.‘’ Appendix B, interview 3

In most of the cases that were interviewed, the municipality came with the idea to start an UCC, and contacted people to trigger them, or wrote a tender for it. This was mostly just for experimentation with urban logistics, to see how it would turn out. There was also a city with a huge air pollution problem who sought a way to solve this. But during the interviews also other cities were mentioned where different people wanted a UCC in their city. For instance, communities of shopkeepers, who wanted less trucks in their streets. There was also a group of inhabitants who wanted a UCC, because their houses were sagging because of the amount of trucks in the street.

‘’I have always said: it does not matter who will start it, now I know what we need [in comparison to 8 years ago]’’ Appendix B, interview 1

Then there are different concepts of UCCs, some with transporters as participants, some with end-receivers and they all wanted to cover the whole of The Netherlands with their services. This did not work out with this small market.

‘’…also got vehicles which we can deploy on a wide array of activities, not only for the UCC but also for our ‘normal’ courier work’’ Appendix B, interview 2

But nearly all the interviewees stated that it is next to impossible to be able to operate without an organization subsidizing it.

‘’If you can’t combine your inner city activities[UCC] with other activities, you need a warehouse, forklift, personnel, you name and calculate it, it will not function on its own yet’’ Appendix B, interview 2

Of the organizations interviewed, there was only one which was able to survive without an organization backing the operation.

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31 ‘’It is a good activity for people with a distance to the labour market, and those people can do this job perfectly fine. Some have a physical disability and some mental, but if you put those two together you can have a fine one you know.’’ Appendix B, interview 3

The categories technology, location and vehicles are also put into this core category. These categories are all decisions that an operator has to make, and would thus fit best in this core category. There will be started with the technology category. Currently one of the biggest issues in the technology category is the IT problem. Because an UCC delivers parcels for several transporters, which all have different systems, the UCC also have to work with several systems to let the transporters be informed about the status of their parcels. Which causes the employees of the UCC to go into city with several small computers (handhelds) to scan the packages when delivered. This means that with every run the employee has 5 or 6 handhelds in the truck, and the employee needs to sort out which parcel needs which handheld, this is not very efficient.

‘’Suppliers, transporters and receivers must be able to be informed at any moment about the status of the delivery.’’ Appendix C

One other aspect of technology is the rise of the e-commerce, which opens new possibilities for UCCs to collect goods from the shopkeeper and deliver them to the consumer in the city. This causes the UCCs to increase their service area from inner city to the whole city.

The operator also have to make decisions about are the vehicles. Although a choice of an electric vehicle seem to be obvious, there are some issues that must be taken into account

‘’That was not even a well thought choice, we did not even look at alternatives as gas or something alike’’. Appendix B, interview 3

Although an electric vehicle has several advantages as no air pollution, quiet, less noise, less wearing parts and relatively small, which makes it more friendly to the shopping public, are there also some disadvantages for using an electric vehicle. The first is the purchase price of the vehicle, which is around 1,5 times the price of a normal vehicle. Furthermore it needs to charge after every 100 kilometres and when it breaks down it will be out of service for 3 or 4 days because the service level is not that high yet. ‘’There is not really a good electrical truck which is payable with a reasonable service level. This way you lose the truck for 3 or 4 days before it is repaired.’’ Appendix B, interview 1

The last point of the electric vehicle is the capability of such a vehicle is less than a conventional vehicle, which can cause inefficiency, because you have to use more of these vehicles.

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32 then diminish. But for a UCC which is not bound to an organization is this a valid option due to the laws of transportation. It also gives the opportunity to focus more on the core business, consolidation.

‘’Where is our added value? Are we a transporter or a UCC? Then we said: there are already enough transporters with half empty trucks, so we will focus on the UCC. We will direct, coordinate and consolidate, transporting is not interesting.’’ Appendix B, interview 1

Finally, there is the location category. The operator of the UCC also needs to make a decision on where to locate the UCC. When a UCC is part of a company, it will also be on the terrain of this company. But when a new UCC is going to be set up it is often decided to just to go with whatever is available. Whenever the operator has the chance to pick a location, there are a couple of things he has to keep an eye on. First is the distance to the service area. When using electric vehicles, a long distance can cause trouble because these vehicles do not have a long range. Also the distance to the highway has to be taken into account, to be appealing to the transporters. Considering the size of the facility the opinions are spread out. One says that there is only need for a bit of crossdocking, while the other needs 1500m2 inside space. Also the offering of additional services plays a part in this (for example with storage).

4.2 Objectives

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33

4.3 Figure

In addition to the results this figure is being presented. It has almost the same set up as figure 1, but in

this figure nearly all the results are processed, to provide a summarizing overview.

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34

5. Discussion

This chapter discusses the results in the light of the research objective. It also compares the literature studied before with the results from this research. Concluding with an evaluation of the performed research.

The objective of this research was to help new initiators and operators of a UCC make the right decisions to help the UCC succeed. This was done by looking at the relations between the different instruments and objectives of a UCC. After performing the research, it turned out that there was a lack of objectives for a UCC at municipalities, where the participants were only concerned with money. The municipality usually gave some subsidy because it was interested in the concept of a UCC, but only in one case did the municipality give the UCC an objective. This objective was to find at least 100 participants (end-users in this case) (Appendix B, interview 1). This is a good objective, because the main reason that UCCs struggle is due to a lack of volume that flows through the UCC, causing a lack of funds. A flaw in this case was that the operator of the UCC offered the service for free to the end-receiver and relied on the subsidy for funding. When the subsidy ceased, the UCC failed.

Looking at the objectives of a municipality, it turns out that they were hardly measured by the municipality. This makes it hard to determine which instrument help with which objective, the objectives did exist to some level, but nobody really measured them, or tried to find out what the influences of the UCC were. There are of course some relations, for instance, using electric truck improves the quality of the air, one interviewee had some research showing that the consolidation of the freight actually gave the biggest impact in all the objectives, not the additional services or mode of transport. But one can’t expect a UCC to make all the difference, as there are other factors that cause pollution (Appendix B, interview 5). A UCC is just a piece of the puzzle. The modes of transport may not have the most significant impact, but it does have a big impact on the image of the UCC.

Looking at the failure of the UCCs, it became clear that the role of the municipality in the literature is undervalued. The municipality has a big influence in a UCC becoming a success. This can be achieved by funding, having a good policy and enforcing this policy. Tennøy (2010) stated that the municipality has a huge role in the UCC process because of its impartial aspect, which is true, but there is more to it. The municipality needs to step up as a game changer (Appendix B, interview 5), and have a strict enforcement of their policy.

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35 The concept of additional services is also not well examined in the literature, compared to the importance that emerged in the results. These kind of services to create more revenue result from a UCC that is not earning enough revenue with its core business. Perhaps this is the reason why it is not well described in the literature, but looking at the results, more emphasis must be placed on this idea.

6. Conclusion

This research provided new insights on the topic of urban consolidation centres. First, the role of the municipality is undervalued in the current literature. The municipality should be mentioned as a more important stakeholder, because they are the ‘’game changer’’ which enables an UCC. Also, municipalities usually have objectives like improving air quality and reducing congestions, but they barely measure them, making it hard to find out whether their performance is increasing or not. The second insight regards the new role of the suppliers. They have the potential power to force the transporters to use the UCCs by letting them deliver the freight to the UCCs.

This research set out to find the relations between the different instruments and objectives, but as it turned out there were barely any objectives assigned. Despite this, this research can still help new UCCs by giving them ideas for instruments, together with some advantages or disadvantages of these instruments. For instance, the vehicles, whether they are practical or not, or perhaps for participants, who will be the customers? Also which service will one offer the customers, will there be any additional services? This research helps the new UCC by informing them so they can make better decisions.

Looking at the results it becomes clear that there are some differences with the existing literature, where most of the differences are by putting emphasis on the categories. All the categories are mentioned earlier in the literature review, but in the literature they do not get the attention they deserve this field. It would be a good idea for further research to investigate the suppliers as participants, to find out what the issues are on their side. Also, it is not clear if saturation was yet reached in grounded theory, because in the last interview still some new interesting data came up. It would be a good idea to interview some more people to validate the results of this research.

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