Project number: MF-4.1k

Funding source: Volvo Research and Educational Foundations

Performance period: 1/1/2018 - 12/31/2018

Project description

This modeling chain has been tested with real data on the Paris Ile-de-France (IdF) region, for the year 2012. Economic establishments in IdF induced around 890,000 freight trips per day. Following Wardrop?s equilibrium principles, we have estimated that LGVs and HGVs correspond to 7.8% of total distances traveled in IdF. In addition, the more densely populated the areas, the higher the flows of freight vehicles and the lower the mean vehicles? speed. Lastly, the share of CO₂, NOx and PM₁₀ emissions due to freight vehicles is at least 2.5 times larger than the share of LGVs and HGVs in the regional traffic. Our estimates made explicit that the contribution of freight vehicles to the regional air pollution is larger in the central areas of IdF, where more individuals are exposed and impacted. Crossing the traffic information with the official marginal external costs of air pollution in France, the environmental social cost of freight traffic in IdF corresponds to 0.4% of the regional GDP.

Built on the same methodology, this research extends the environmental assessment of freight activities in IdF towards two directions: First, we enjoy new socioeconomic data and we can duplicate the whole calculations for years 2006 and 2015. Second, we are now able to isolate the specific contribution of warehousing and wholesale activities to the regional traffic and to the corresponding pollutants emissions. Put differently, this research is an original attempt to study the environmental impact of any potential ?logistics sprawl? (LS) that may have occurred in the Paris region over 2006-2015.

In particular, this analysis aims to consider changes in all factors affecting the emissions of vehicles linked to logistics activities in the Paris region: the number of logistics firms in IdF and their volumes of daily operations, the geographical locations of warehouses and of the goods? receivers, the total distances travelled by LGVs and HGVs, the technologies of vehicles' engines, the travel speeds of LGVs and HGVs linked to logistics firms, the places where the kilometers driven by logistics-related vehicles are realized and the density of inhabitants harmed by the pollutants emissions.