Profs. Diego Delle Donne, ESSEC Business School, Claudia Archetti, University of Brescia, and Prof. Alberto Santini, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, share research into a pragmatic, immediately scalable solution for transporting the world’s packages sustainably through the last-mile to delivery.

By CoBS Editor Antonin Delobre. Related research: Integrating public transport in sustainable last-mile delivery: Column generation approaches, Diego Delle Donne, Alberto Santini, and Claudia Archetti, European Journal of Operational Research, 2025.

Picture your city at 8:00 AM. While thousands of commuters descend into the subway or board trams to reach their offices, a parallel and much noisier “brown avalanche” is taking place on the streets above. Thousands of delivery vans, idling in double-rows and clogging narrow arteries, are struggling to drop off the latest e-commerce packages within ever-tightening time windows.

We are witnessing a collision of two worlds: a sophisticated, scheduled passenger network running half-empty in off-peak hours, and a chaotic, carbon-heavy delivery scramble that is pushing urban infrastructure to its breaking point.

But what if the solution to our delivery nightmare was already sitting right in front of us, painted in the colours of our local bus or tram? In a recent research study, Profs. Diego Delle Donne, Claudia Archetti, and Alberto Santini propose that the future of the city is not found in adding more vehicles, but in a “three-echelon” symphony that invites the humble parcel to become a passenger on the transit network we already own.

The dilemma of the doorstep delivery

The “last-mile delivery” (LMD) is the final leg of a parcel’s journey from a distribution centre to a customer’s home. It has fundamentally changed the nature of our supply chains. Retailers no longer ship in bulk to centralized stores; instead, they ship millions of individual, small parcels directly to consumers.

This shift has created an operational “wicked problem”. Couriers now handle a high volume of small shipments, often requiring delivery during narrow windows when customers are home. The cost of this convenience is high. Beyond the financial burden, the externalities—traffic congestion, CO2 emissions, noise, and visual clutter—have become unbearable in dense urban environments.

While many propose futuristic solutions like autonomous drones or porters, Delle Donne, Archetti and Santini’s research focuses on a more pragmatic and potentially scalable operational practice: integrating public transport into the delivery ecosystem to leverage unused transit capacity and drastically reduce the number of vans entering our city centres.

Public transport and last-mile delivery: The architecture of fluidity

To turn a public bus into a delivery vehicle, one cannot simply hand a package to a driver. It requires a carefully coordinated “three-tier” (3T-DPPT) system that functions like a relay race.

• The 1st step: Heavy trucks move parcels from large distribution centres located outside the city to strategic public transport stops, known as “in-stops”. Crucially, this study introduces a strict “no-wait” policy: trucks must unload their cargo immediately upon arrival to avoid obstructing public roads or hindering transit operations.
• The 2nd step: This is where the magic happens. Parcels are loaded onto buses, trams, or commuter trains, utilizing “spare capacity”. The parcel effectively “hitchhikes” on existing scheduled routes toward the city centre.
• The 3rd step: At designated “out-stops” in the city centre, zero-emission vehicles—typically cargo bikes—pick up the parcels for final delivery to the customer’s doorstep.

This architecture ensures that heavy, polluting trucks stay on the outskirts of the city, while the “heavy lifting” into the urban core is done by infrastructure that is already moving.

The primary reason this system hasn’t been widely adopted is not a lack of vehicles, but a lack of synchronization. Public transport operates on “fixed itineraries and predetermined schedules”. A bus will not wait for a truck that is stuck in traffic. If the 1st step fails by even a few minutes, the entire chain collapses. This study tackles this “synchronization” through high-level mathematical optimization.

The researchers recognized that the journey of a parcel is “severely constrained both in space and time”. By using By using advanced optimization techniques, in particular column generation approaches combining routing and scheduling decisions, they created a decision-support tool that can that can orchestrate these moving parts efficiently. Their model accounts for the maximum time a parcel can wait at a stop, the capacity of the bus, and the delivery windows of the customer. It turns a logistical headache into a precisely timed urban dance.

One of the most significant reflections of this work is the debunking of the idea that green logistics is more expensive. Through an extensive computational campaign, the authors compared their integrated 3T-DPPT model against traditional delivery methods and simplified heuristics. The results are a wake-up call for the industry.

Their approach identified 16 new “best known solutions” for logistical problems that had previously baffled researchers. More importantly, for the pragmatic manager, the model demonstrated cost improvements of 8.38% on average, with some scenarios reaching over 16% in savings. This proves that leveraging existing public infrastructure is not just an environmental “nice-to-have”; it is a competitive operational strategy that reduces the need for expensive, dedicated van fleets.

Implications for urban governance: A new social contract

The implications of this research extend far beyond the warehouse. It suggests a new way of thinking about urban governance and the “social cost” of delivery.

• Traditionally, public transit authorities and private logistics couriers have operated in separate universes. This study implies that the city must be viewed as a single, integrated network.
  • Municipalities that equip their trams and buses with cargo capacity, like “RegioKargo” in Karlsruhe, Germany, can maximize their ROI on public spending while simultaneously solving the private sector’s congestion problem.
• The study concludes that rather than expanding networks to every possible stop, planners should focus on equipping a limited number of high-capacity vehicles and stops. It is about depth, not just breadth.
• Interestingly, the researchers note that “regulatory aspects, more than technical challenges,” often hinder these systems. The math is ready; the technology is ready. What is missing is the legal framework to allow freight and passengers to share the same cabin safely and efficiently.

Public transport and last-mile delivery: A vision of the breathing city

In the “contemporary age”, we often look to the sky for innovation, drones and flying taxis, forgetting the massive, underutilized assets rolling past us every five minutes. Profs. Delle Donne, Archetti, and Santini remind us that the most sustainable innovation is often the one that makes better use of what we already have.

By integrating public transport into last-mile delivery, we move toward a city that “breathes” again. We see fewer vans, less noise, and a transit system that pays for itself by carrying both people and the products they love. The “urban symphony” is a future where the algorithm serves the citizen, ensuring that our e-commerce boom doesn’t have to mean an urban bust.

Useful links:

• Link up with Diego Delle Donne, Claudia Archetti, and Alberto Santini on LinkedIn
• Read a related article: Distribution and Supply Chains: Making them greener while more effective
• Discover ESSEC Business School France–Singapore–Morocco
• Apply for an ESSEC MBA or EMBA.

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