2018 Theses Master's

Parcel Delivery and Urban Form: A Case Study of Greater London

Guo, Xin

Since the appearance of e-commerce, people’s shopping modes have changed significantly. In the last decade, e-commerce has increased by approximately 15% every year in the UK. In 2015, the value of total e-commerce sales in the UK was £533 billion, which was nearly 20% of all sales. The increasing number of packages has led to a growing number of delivery vehicles in residential areas to deliver the packages to consumers’ homes. The boom of end-to-end delivery was not under the scope of previous urban or traffic plans, which caused unexpected planning and traffic problems. There are two main questions in this research: How does the current road network system adapt to or conflict with the rapid growth delivery traffic trend caused by e-commerce? What are the planning factors that affect delivery transport activity in the Greater London area? The result of statistical test indicates the increase of delivery traffic activities aggravate the traffic congestion. Statistical and spatial analysis show that parcel delivery is affected by the urban form. Some factors such as neighborhood size, population density, number of households, and commercial and retail land use patterns are likely to influence the extent and location of delivery traffic activity.