The Delivery Time Performance Study of a Novel Collaborative Delivery System Integrating Drones and Ground Public Transit for Urban Last‐Mile Delivery

With the rapid expansion of e‐commerce, effectively managing last‐mile delivery while satisfying consumer demands for timeliness and convenience has become increasingly imperative. Traditional delivery systems, which predominantly depend on human labor and freight vehicles, encounter significant challenges, including traffic congestion, escalating labor expenses, and environmental degradation. The advancements in drone technology present a promising solution for the logistics domain. This study proposes a novel collaborative delivery system that integrates drones with ground public transit, and aims to assess the delivery time performance of this system. Within this system, drones are responsible for direct parcel delivery to customers, while ground public transportation vehicles handle the transportation of drones and parcels between designated stops. The study develops a delivery strategy and establishes an operational framework to attain the delivery time for each customer. Subsequently, this study assesses the delivery time performance of this delivery system by introducing relevant metrics. Numerical experiments conducted across three distinct scenarios validate the proposed methodology, demonstrating the system’s potential in urban last‐mile delivery. The findings indicate that the collaborative delivery system exhibits good performance, especially in multi‐parcel delivery mode compared to single‐parcel delivery mode. Moreover, sensitivity analyses are performed to explore the effects of departure intervals and dwell time and obtain valuable insights on system operations.