Classification and benchmark of City Logistics measures: an empirical analysis

Urban freight distribution accounts for a significant share of pollution and congestion in urban areas. To reduce these negative impacts, municipalities have implemented several City Logistics (CL) measures. This paper presents the empirical analysis of a dataset of 70 European cities that have been piloting or rolling out a CL measure, to provide an updated indication of the status of CL initiatives and analyse the diffusion of CL internationally. The research objective is also to help understand the contextual factors might explain their introduction. To this end, a set of City Logistics Indices (CLI) is used as indicators of the breadth and number of CL measures implemented in a city. A statistical correlation of these CLIs with respect to a set of independent variables, namely the contextual factors, is also performed. Results reveal that the level of pollution, the diffusion of e-commerce and GDP are important drivers of CL deployment.