Characteristics of urban freight traffic in a medium size Indian city – a case study of Udaipur, Rajasthan

Abstract

Goods Traffic constitute an important component of traffic of traffic flow in Urban area. However, Urban Freight is not a very well understood among the administrators and decision makers, especially in Indian cities. In order to make our cities sustainable, this particular field of transport planning is extremely important because an efficient and effective logistics sector is vital to the economy. New models for management of freight are required in urban areas in which, the local authorities need to play a pro-active role. In larger cities, there are still some considerations towards the urban freight but in the emerging medium size cities, it is completely missing. So, this paper attempts to contribute towards laying a groundwork towards understanding of the characteristics of urban freight logistics in medium size cities of India. For this, detailed primary surveys were done in the case city Udaipur and they have been used to create a profile of Freight Generating and Freight Handling areas in the city, along with detailed understanding of Supply Chain of the most important commodities.