The growing number of uncoordinated delivery trips to retail shops especially in the Central Business Districts of cities leads to a considerable increase of traffic as well as to a continuously stronger hindrance of the remaining traffic due to the loading and unloading procedures on the streets. Therefore it is an important goal to reach a better coordination of the commercial traffic through city-logistics-concepts, especially by bundling goods. All goods which can be bundled should be labelled (e.g. in a freight transport centre) indicating destination, weight and volume of goods. A special software for route optimization will compute the sequence in which deliveries should be effected. During the trip the optimized route will be checked continuously with the help of ITS on the basis of the actual traffic situation and actual position of the vehicle and possibly modified in order to save time. This system can be expanded announcing the exact arrival time of the vehicle at the loading area of a shop thus enabling to clear the loading area for the incoming goods.
Abstract