**4. Challenges of city logistics**

Cities all around the world needs to protect the sustainability of its cities. The logistics regulations and polices implemented usually would be looking into solving these challenges which are environmental sustainability, social sustainability and economical sustainability [6]. The environmental sustainability is on air pollution, social sustainability are the fatalities, noise road safety and economical sustainability is about unreliable services and delivery delays. Improving the efficiency for the goods movements has been the main focus of city logistics. City logistics has an affect towards the citizen living in the cities such as accidents and pollutions, the service providers which reducing their revenue because of the restrictions of movements and the world, based on the contribution of transport to global warming [21]. Restrictions on trucks in the city center has been one of the most effectives ways to reduce the challenges in the city. The restrictions are seen as the best way to reducing number of trucks during the peak period hence would help in alleviating the pollution. It has also avoided the trucks to compete with other modes in using the limited space available. However, this restriction has also impeded the trucks operations which would jeopardize the service level of the service providers hence would affect the delivery time to the citizen.

The last delivery to the receivers is known as the last mile delivery. Apart from the sustainable challenges, city logistics also need to deal with the last mile problems. The receivers might receive many deliveries per day. This would create a difficult delivery process. The receivers may receive its goods from several vendors, if consolidation between vendors can be done, it would reduce the number of deliveries to the respective receivers. Restrictions on deliveries has also created many challenges in city logistics operations. Many receivers would not approve if the deliveries to be made at night, thus this would increase the number of congestions during peak period during the day [22]. If the receivers are at home, the delivery might be inefficient since the delivery involve small parcels. However, with the development of ecommerce, small parcel deliveries have become very much critical.

The most crucial challenges in city logistics are the restrictions that have to be obeyed by the logistics service providers. The focus is to ensure the effective movement for the last and first mile delivery [23]. A lot of rules, regulations and restrictions need to be adhered by any service providers. Failure to fulfill these set of regulations will affect the city logistics deliveries. The regulations would different from one city to another [24]. However, the comments challenges are the window for making the deliveries, green zone area, predestination or active transport zone

areas and much ore. This would make some destinations not accessible for the service providers. To ensure the last mile deliveries can be performed efficiently, the service providers need to consider the diversity of the receivers in the city centre. Different types of houses, office locations and industrial areas has enhanced the complexity of deliveries [11]. The last deliveries to the inner cities have become very much difficult due to the restrictions and it requires small parcels to be delivered more frequently in order to fulfill the demand.

The main challenges in providing city logistics deliveries are to ensure that the unsustainable impact can be minimize. However, transport and logistics has always been known has a negative impact on sustainability aspects. The negative impacts usually go the environmental issues. The environmental issues lie on people, profit and planet [11]. With many actors involves in the city logistics activities, many conflicting decisions on its operations may arises. Traffic congestions, pollutions and noise might have a severe effect on people in the cities. The restrictions on regulations for the deliveries will have an impact towards the efficiency of deliveries which will reduce the profitability of the service providers and the planet will be affected through the global warming and pollutions [25]. The diversity of actors in city logistics operations has indicated the differences on the needs of each actor in making the cities more sustainable. The administrators' main objective is to develop and maintain a livable city. Reducing the traffic congestions, reducing the air pollutions and reducing the noise level are the main target of the administrators. So, the regulations and restrictions implemented is to achieve the objectives. As for the carriers and logistics providers, their main objective to ensure the delivery of products can be done as efficiently as possible. They need to plan the deliveries according the regulations and restriction imposed by the administrators of the cities. With different regulations in different cities, the utilization of the capacity of the vehicles used may have an impact towards planning the delivery operations. Hence, the cost of delivery also may increase [26, 27]. The shippers would definitely need their product to be delivered on time since this will enhance the image of the shippers. The receivers of the city logistics service would require a reliable and efficient logistics service providers to delivery their products but with a minimum disruption to the environment. The other residents need to have a city with less pollutions and acceptable noise level from the transport that make the deliveries.

Another main challenge in city logistics is to understand the changes in consumer behavior. It is critical to understand consumer behavior since it consists of how the consumers choose and set priority on the products or services they consume. With the e-commerce has become an important trend in city logistics, it has increased the globalizations aspects of products that reach in any cities. Technology and the internet have changed the consumer behavior. Ordering process can be done at any time and any place [28]. The deliveries are expected to be done as quickly as possible. Thus, this has made the increase of demand which requires a flexibility in supply of the product. The e-commerce has demanded a new distribution channel and the last mile distribution has become very much complex and need to handle in effective manner. The number of parcel delivery logistics companies has been increasing since the rapid development of the usage of internet. This has also changed the type of product being delivery through this company. Food and groceries have been included in the last mile deliveries of city logistics which previously more focus on books, clothing and appliances.

With these challenges, the city logistics need to ensure that the policy that supports the operations of the trends need to be available. The administrator of the cities

#### *Sustainable and Efficient City Logistics DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.104413*

needs to carefully plan the type of policy that have to be updated. In certain situation, some new policies might need to be introduced to ensure that the city could support the new trend development. For the city to be sustainable, new logistics operations approaches have to be in place since the new trends might require a fresh type of logistics handling. The sustainability aspects are not only for the city logistics operators but also for the receivers benefits since the operations of city logistics would depends on the continuous buying from the receivers in the city center. The policy and regulations need to benefit not only the city logistics operators but also to the receivers. If the receivers are not satisfied with the services provided, repeat purchase might now happened and it would affect the sustainability of the city logistics operations.
