A new study shows that cycling packages the final few miles to their recipients isn’t just greener than using a van, but often quicker too.
And when you factor in a van’s price, the cost of fuel, insurance, and depreciation, plus parking fines and congestion charges, thecalculation swings even further in cargo bikes’ favor—so there would also appear to be an economic incentive for companies to make the switch. This, though, is where it becomes tricky.
“To make cargo bikes economical, you need a high density of people around a distribution hub. But that’s also where rent tends to be the highest,” says Antoine Robichet, a coauthor of the Paris paper and a PhD student at Gustave Eiffel University in France. “So, if you want to take all your parcels by bike, then your price will skyrocket.”using satellite hubs—essentially, parking short articulated trucks in neighborhoods and distributing parcels from them.
“The software that exists is for vans that pick up at the beginning of the day and then do eight hours of deliveries,” says Nicolas Collignon, cofounder of Kale Collective, a startup focusing on technology for cargo bike logistics. “But a cargo bike can’t carry eight hours’ of deliveries, so the routing needs to be more dynamic.”
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