Assessing the Diffusion of a City Logistics System Based on Low Emission Vehicles

City logistics (CL) has recently emerged as a comprehensive and coordinated approach to reduce the negative impacts of last mile logistics, making urban freight distribution more sustainable from both an economic and an environmental point of view. Assessing the viability of CL initiatives is necessary to comprehend the relevant aspects that can support their adoption by private stakeholders. This work focuses on a new CL system relying on low emission vans for a large city in Northern Italy. A System Dynamics simulation model has been developed in order to assess the potential diffusion of the system at issue and understand the main factors that either stimulate or hinder it. Behavioral, economic, and environmental issues that characterize urban freight distribution are taken into account. A sensitivity analysis has been performed to test the robustness of the model and to predict the CL system behavior when its underlying parameters change. The outcomes show that the new system is feasible and allow suggesting some policies to encourage its adoption.