Exploring last mile synergies in passenger and freight transport

'The last mile' is a phrase commonly used in a logistics and freight transport context to highlight the special characteristics and challenges in moving goods within urban areas in what is usually the last leg of a long freight transport chain. The last mile challenge often also involves changing mode of transport for that leg, categorizing the transport chain as intermodal. Although similar issues arise for passenger transport, integrated transport is more commonly used to highlight the need to change modes of transport for the last, or fi rst, section of a long-distance public transport journey. Although passenger and goods transport share the same infrastructure, predominantly in urban areas, they are largely seen as diff erent systems and remain separated. Thus wasting scarce resources and contributing to congestion and the 'last mile' problem. In this context, the aim of this paper is to synthesize the main issues related to the fi rst and last mile in freight and passenger transport and, based on that, to explore synergies between them in order to share the use of resources-based on time, space and vehicle. To this end, various examples of sharing resources for transport of passengers and freight are provided. The paper concludes that integrating passenger and freight transport in urban areas is a promising approach to easing the last mile problem. However, to advance operational integration of passenger and freight transport services, integration at the institutional and business levels of freight and passenger transport provision is required.