City Logistics Research: A Transatlantic Perspective (2013)

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60 Opportunities for Collaboration Concluding Observations Robert E. Skinner, Jr., Transportation Research Board, Washington, D.C., USA, presiding Robert E. Skinner, Jr., kicked off the final session of the symposium with two questions: • Do we need to have more interaction among researchers? • Do we need institutional collaboration? Lance Grenzeback said he heard two themes on which there was interesting research to be done. He noticed two cultures: an academic culture and a private-firm culture. Academics are interested in network analysis and in the system—the average truck flow, not the indi- vidual trip—but private firms consider trip-level data to be important. He noted that in the successful projects mentioned, such as the Binnenstadservice and Holguín- Veras’s off-hour delivery project in New York City, the project planners brought together people from the aca- demic and private sectors, as well as people represent- ing the political view. Painting a picture of the structure and dynamics of those academia–industry–policy part- nerships would be interesting. Rolf Schmitt noted that two subjects were missing. The first missing subject was the whole issue of truck routes in cities, which he said were a “blood sport”: a battle between community and interstate commerce. The broader question of this subject is that of managing vehicles in downtown areas. Some work has been done on this, but more needs to be done. The second subject Schmitt mentioned is that of how to best integrate urban logistics into land use planning. Vikenti Spassov proposed the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) as a model for coopera- tive research among members from different countries and suggested looking at www.cost.eu/ for more information. José Holguín-Veras commented that the objective of this meeting was to foster cooperation. Many attendees of this symposium were from universities, and it is impor- tant to create opportunities for international collabora- tion in this area. The National Science Foundation (NSF) provides models and projects specifically aimed at joint funding of projects, he said. Skinner agreed with the need to remove some of the barriers to international cooperation and to provide some incentives in existing projects and explore joint funding mechanisms. Edoardo Marcucci pointed out the need to encourage international cooperation and proposed creating a glos- sary that would define “city logistics” so that researchers understand its scope and boundaries. Second, to alleviate the problems of data collection that result in data that cannot be compared with data from other sites, Mar- cucci proposed finding common basic indicators when collecting data so that the data could be shared. Lanfranco Senn said the one of the results of the sym- posium’s two days was the knowledge that participants gained from each other. The question is how to maintain that path. The answer is to pick some issues and accu- mulate our knowledge, because research is a cumulative process. In the area of data, administrative data are less

61opportunities for collaboration: concluding observations costly to obtain, and a glossary of definitions would be useful. Skinner mentioned the idea of “twinning” on research, with a researcher on each side of the Atlantic working on an issue. Genevieve Giuliano supported Holguín-Veras’s point about facilitating or incentivizing more collaborative research, because otherwise the barriers to such col- laboration win out. She proposed identifying the value added that international research can generate. She men- tioned that 50 years of research on travel behavior iden- tified that the principles that drive travel behavior (i.e., the basic motivations of travel) are the same regardless of location. Institutions and policy both play a role in city logistics, she continued, and we are at a point at which we might want some understanding of the play- ers. A main theme of the symposium has been the inter- play of private-sector behavior and public interventions to address the external costs. It would behoove us, she said, to have an understanding of why freight works and where policy interventions work and don’t work. Barbara Lenz summarized that the symposium partici- pants discussed freight, urban freight, and logistics. The purpose of the meeting was to compare logistics in dif- ferent contexts, and researchers should think about the context: In which context does freight work in which way? European cities are different from each other, and they are even more different from U.S. cities. Context has an impact on what can be done. Ken Button said that collaborative international work has taken place in the past and that the best results come from involving academics, government, and industry. All three pillars need to be involved. He also noted that there was a graying of the transport community, espe- cially among those who attended this conference, and he called for bringing in younger academics and stellar young government workers from the United States and the EU, because they will be the future of research. Skinner pleaded “guilty” in that one of the reasons for the disproportionate number of older researchers at this conference was the result of figuring out how to blend the U.S. and EU research communities. He agreed that involving younger researchers has long-term payoff. Michel Savy praised the symposium as being a rich two days, and he said that although no period of time is stable, we are currently living in a transition period. He suggested that another research direction could be long-range studies; not just prediction, but building sce- narios to explore possibilities to put a magnifying glass on trends, policies, and so forth. The important result is to develop long-range scenarios for urban logistics. Rosário Macário offered the example of Atlantis. This program, jointly sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education and the European Commission’s Directorate– General for Education and Culture, promoted a student- centered, transatlantic dimension to higher education and training through work placements and internships, as well as supporting innovative curricula and teaching tools. She said this program was very successful and could possibly serve as a model. An unidentified participant said that different initia- tives and best practices to support administrations’ quality management schemes in city logistics could be researched. That is, there are many best practices, such as the London case, of all the stakeholders being at the table. Just as there are voluntary schemes for fleets and operators, there could also be a voluntary scheme for quality management in city logistics. This would touch on many of the themes discussed today, he said, from data collection and analysis to the cycle of setting strate- gies, analysis of the problem, definition of the actions, implementations, monitoring, and evaluation. The ques- tion is, what are the critical success factors and steps that governments and politicians should take to develop city logistics policies in this cycle approach? Kazuya Kawamura added that BESTFACT was a very effective way to convince the skeptics, by showing them something that works. Alessandro Damiani said that he was very happy with the symposium and saw it as a success, given the sincere comments he had gotten from colleagues, who said it was a very positive experience. His personal key perfor- mance indicator, he said, is that he confesses to often getting bored at conferences, but this time he did not get bored. Despite getting only 3 hours of sleep, he was engaged and learned a lot. There are many great experts to learn from, and the symposium was a success that exceeded his expectations. He thanked Bob Skinner for the original idea of the symposium and Martine Micozzi for her investment of time over the past several months. He also thanked Mike Walton and Alan McKinnon, the cochairs, as well as the other experts and rapporteurs. Much preparation went into organizing the symposium, and it was worth it. Damiani recapped what he learned, namely that city logistics is at the heart of most negative connotations concerning transport (i.e., the inefficiencies and conges- tion), but there is also great potential for improvements in efficiency and sustainability. Second, he learned and confirmed his belief in the value of comparing experi- ences across locations. Another take-away from the symposium was that academic models need to include business models and corporate models, and that behav- iors are often more important than technology. Even

62 city logistics research: a transatlantic perspective more important is enabling the applicability of the research, which is influenced by the framework, fea- tures, governance, data collection, and engagement of the stakeholders. Damiani concluded by offering a message to the attend- ees: there is a great opportunity to be seized now for collab- orative research, and we are ready to seize it. Participants have gotten valuable input on the issues and topics, and we have a moral obligation to do something about it. He called for institutional partners, the European Commission, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Trans- portation Research Board (TRB) to identify programs and funding schemes to follow up the symposium. He said that he could make a precommitment, or statement of availabil- ity, on the side of the European Commission for Research and Innovation and the Director–General. He hoped that the Research and Innovative Technology Administration (RITA) and the Federal Highway Administration might be able to comparably help. Damiani also suggested leaving the door open to a core nucleus for other partners, such as in Japan, to become involved. Emerging nations could also be interested part- ners. Finally, he suggested making some additional effort to make this visible, counting on the proceedings, TRB, RITA, and the European Commission to start doing that valorization. Kevin Womack also offered his congratulations to the participants on their perseverance and paraphrased Senn that this was not a “one and done” event. Much energy went into it. He wished he could say that the U.S. DOT had funds to offer, but he could not mislead the group to say so. He hoped that, going forward, collaboration would be expanded and new relationships created. There are funding opportunities for U.S. researchers who have an EU twin, because the NSF would look favorably on such a pairing. It will be up to the attendees to set the agenda, develop new and expanded relationships, fill in the gaps, and bridge industry and academia on the broader social issues. He reiterated a conversation he had had with another planning committee member, Chip White, that the para- digm in academia has to be changed to convince academic administrators that implementation of the research done is important. Womack concluded by thanking partici- pants for contributing their intelligence and expertise. Alan McKinnon said that the choice of city logistics was a good research topic; it is a mature field with enthu- siastic researchers to tap into it. The next symposia in this series of four will not be subject-specific but will concern implementation, with a more amorphous group of researchers, so it may be harder to get people who know each other. He also urged researchers to use this event as a catalyst but not to overlook other col- laborative networks that may already be in place, such as other conferences, databases, and journals that this event reinforces. The EU Commission can take pride in the generous funding for city logistics over 10 to 15 projects that were funded on a collaborative basis with close networking between EU academics. The EU, with its 28 member countries, is collaborating on funding, and the U.S. DOT or TRB might learn from that to inte- grate research across the United States. McKinnon con- cluded with his own key performance indicator, which was looking through journal articles to see which had been coauthored by someone from the United States and someone from the EU. In doing that in preparation for this conference, he didn’t see many such coauthorships. He hoped that when doing that exercise again in 2 or 3 years, he would see more collaboration measured by a transatlantic coauthorship index. Conference chair C. Michael Walton closed the confer- ence by paraphrasing Emerson: “There are events like this that can be characterized as the wine of the human expe- rience.” He said it was great to work with such talented people and thanked the planning committee for its efforts and the participants for making time in their schedules to participate. He officially closed the symposium.