The (Un)sustainable Future of Urban Delivery

People often discuss building cities for people, not cars.?

Urban governments are creating emission- and vehicle-free zones, banning combustion engines, and transforming parking spaces into green areas.

Mobility companies, such as taxis, car-sharing services, and scooter rentals, provide good alternatives to meet all the needs typically served by private cars.

What about the urban impact of e-commerce delivery?

One electric scooter ride, ten truck deliveries

Cities swell with the influx of urban dwellers, real estate development, and rising middle-class incomes.?

Fashion, beauty, pharmacy goods, household necessities, food, last-moment gifts — just about anything can be delivered to someone’s home within days, hours, and even minutes.

The surge in online shopping and instant deliveries adds to urban traffic congestion and air pollution since 2020.

It also puts increasing pressure on the inner-city infrastructure and basic activities like walking and cycling through traffic-filled areas.???

Delivery drivers spend more time en route, navigate crowded roads, and search for rare parking spots.

Several shipping companies often deliver to the same addresses on the same day.

Pedestrians must cross a sprawling parking lot just to reach a supermarket or they dodge reversing delivery trucks on their way to work.

E-commerce last mile needs to change

If home delivery continues to outpace out-of-home (OOH) options, the World Economic Forum predicts a global 60% increase in delivery vehicles within the next five years, by 2030.

This will contribute to 13% of total urban carbon emissions, add five minutes to daily commutes, and extend delivery times by 30 minutes per vehicle, with the greatest impact on the world’s largest and fastest-growing cities.

How can e-commerce optimize inner-city delivery traffic to ensure safe, easy navigation for urban residents while enabling shoppers to receive their orders quickly and conveniently — the key factors influencing where consumers choose to shop?

Mark Briganti , Global Lead for Postal and Parcel Industry at 埃森哲 , concludes:?

“We see a collision course underway with the confluence of municipal regulations, the number of delivery vehicles, increasing e-commerce, and increasing costs of last mile deliveries.”

Delivery ecosystem and urban livability

Here are a few examples of the solutions and commitments the ecosystem embraces.

Electric and autonomous vehicles?

The World Economic Forum estimates that switching from fossil-fuel delivery vans to electric vehicles and micro-mobility fleets, like e-bikes, can cut emissions by up to 93% when supported by micro-fulfillment hubs.?

E-bikes also take up less space, improving the use of public areas.

Autonomous vehicles like drones and ground-based robots can equally ease street congestion by up to 13% while helping to reduce emissions.

Out-of-home (OOH) deliveries

OOH delivery methods, also known as pick-up and drop-off (PUDO) networks, are growing all across Europe as an alternative to traditional home deliveries due to consumer convenience and last-mile efficiency without any extra miles.

Parcel lockers and service points are gaining popularity, even in markets where consumers have long favored home deliveries.

InPost will invest 600M pounds by 2029 to expand its network of automated lockers and logistics infrastructure in the UK.?

In 2024, the number of bpost parcel locker installations in Belgium exceeded 1,26K — a 40% increase in one year — and by 2025, the company aims to double the network.

In September 2024, Sweden-based Budbee announced its full transition to parcel lockers at the expense of traditional home deliveries in the Netherlands.?

In markets with low carrier fragmentation and limited adoption of alternative last-mile methods, it’s unclear whether attractive OOH options drive demand or vice versa, so collaboration between retailers, carriers and consumers is essential.

Urban consolidation centers (UCC)

Over the years, local governments in the Netherlands have been transforming Dutch urban landscapes into car- and emission-free zones.

Key cities like Utrecht and Amsterdam plan a complete ban of combustion engines for inner city delivery vans as early as this year.

That’s how the idea of reducing inner city truck traffic via freight hubs called urban consolidation centers (UCCs) was born in the Dutch city of Nijmegen.

Today, it's one of at least a dozen such facilities across the Netherlands.

Rather than entering the city, long-haul trucks enter designated freight hubs on the outskirts of the city.

Consumer orders are then offloaded and reassigned to more compact, emission-free transport modes, such as electric vehicles and bikes, for the last step of the delivery journey.

From store shelf to online shopper

At the individual retail level, omnichannel brands can adopt ship-from-store and in-store pickup as sustainable delivery options for local customers.

By integrating e-commerce with physical stores, they create a unified system where stores act as micro-fulfillment centers for online sales.

This ensures stock, sales, and customer data stay synced across channels.

Handling local orders through stores reduces delivery distances, times, costs, and emissions instead of relying solely on remote warehouses and distribution centers.

Local governments play a vital role in advancing sustainable deliveries, but true progress depends on retailers and carriers working together to achieve growth that’s both financially and environmentally sustainable.