Analysing Long-Term Effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic on Last-Mile Delivery Traffic Using an Agent-Based Travel Demand Model

E-commerce demand has increased steadily over the last decades and this trend has accelerated even more since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. This entailed that user groups such as older people who previously only shopped in-store were incited to shop online to reduce risk of infection leading some to switch to online shopping as the main shopping channel. This study analyses the long-term effects of increased online shopping and subsequent delivery demand due to the Covid-19 pandemic using an agent-based travel demand model. We analyse the simulation of two scenarios for the model area Karlsruhe, Germany: one scenario simulates the parcel delivery demand before the pandemic and the other scenario simulates the demand during the pandemic of the synthetic population. Our results show that there have been shifts in both socio-demographic characteristics of online shoppers and spatial distribution of parcel delivery demand induced by the Covid-19 pandemic. The scenario simulation based on the pandemic related data shows that not only the influence of income has shifted but also the effects of age on e-commerce activity has changed due to the pandemic. ... mehrThe findings are of interest to transport planners and delivery service providers as they highlight the importance of recognising that the Covid-19 pandemic not only induced a shift in socio-demographic profiles of online shoppers but that this shift also entails a change in the spatial distribution of parcel deliveries.