Since 2014 the Institute of Sustainable Development works together with the city of Zurich, partners from the logistics sector, the trade association of the city of Zurich and other ZHAW institutes on a CTI financed urban logistics project. The aim is to create a collaborative platform, giving carriers the possibility to cooperate regarding the delivery and pick-up of goods in inner cities and offering companies transporting their goods by themselves the option to hand over their shipments to professional carriers.
A consolidated database containing good flows and other relevant data was created and an optimization model was designed, which allows to simulate the effects of cooperation. The results show that cooperation within a collaborative platform can bring about significant reductions regarding the amount of tours, distances and operating costs. At the same time the willingness to join the collaboration is marginal, e.g. due to the reluctance to work together with competitors or the wish to keep personal contact to the customers. The Tagesanzeiger illustrates the latest results in the following article: http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/schweiz/standard/Lieber-im-Stau-stehen-als-kooperieren/story/25542093