Innovation and Sustainability in Urban Logistics with Autonomous Electric Wagons: An Application to Rome

This study investigates the potential of Autonomous Electric Wagons (AEWs) as an emerging technology for sustainable urban logistics. Because AEWs are still at the pilot-development stage, the objective is to develop a conceptual framework for assessing how such vehicles could be integrated into a metropolitan freight system and to explore its application to Rome. The proposed framework combines a peripheral Urban Consolidation Center (UCC), autonomous electric rail transport, inner-urban Urban Distribution Centers (UDCs), and low-emission last-mile delivery. The Rome application uses parcel-demand estimation, AEW capacity and fleet dimensioning, railway-cycle analysis, and scenario analysis to examine the potential scale and operating requirements of the proposed system. Under the reference assumptions, approximately 40,000 parcels/day are on average estimated for Amazon’s Rome market. A four-AEW platoon completing four daily cycles provides a theoretical capacity of approximately 54,000 parcels/day, indicating that the reference configuration could accommodate the estimated demand with a substantial margin. A second scenario with a UCC managed by a third-party logistics (3PL) operator and a shorter cycle time, allows a four AEW platoon six daily cycles for a theoretical transport capacity of 81,000 parcels/day. The analysis also identifies railway capacity, coupling and terminal operations, signaling and interoperability, and the availability of reliable freight-demand data as critical conditions requiring further investigation. The study therefore provides a conceptual and quantitative basis for evaluating AEWs in urban logistics and identifies the technical and operational issues that must be addressed before pilot-scale implementation can be assessed.