Abstract
Cities all around the world are observing increasing levels of urban freight activities owing to the growth of internet shopping combined to the traditional distribution to shops, creating additional problems in terms of congestions and environmental impacts. This study, developed within the European Project SUITS framework, aims at showing how Local Authorities can effectively observe freight flows from the demand side. This led to the design, implementation and testing of a spatial cluster analysis approach to understand which are the most important loading/unloading parking spots in an urban setting by processing the GPS traces of a fleet of logistic vehicles. Later field activities should focus on these important areas to maximize the efficiency of the survey. A survey of retailers and shops in such areas to observe delivering activities is then proposed. The whole process, namely the spatial analysis and the field survey, was then tested to the real case of an Italian city (Turin) to assess the potentiality of the methods. The methodology proposed can give useful insights to Local Authorities on a way of monitoring the freight distribution patterns at the more disaggregated individual loading/unloading area.
Highlights
In cities usually affected by critical traffic conditions, high levels of urban freight activities may create additional problems in terms of congestion and environmental impacts [1]
It is as a key figure that is expected to take into account the needs of different stakeholders involved in the field while developing a proper strategy for urban freight transport, through the collaboration with all the actors involved
Looking at the European level, the European Commission requires cities to define urban freight plans in order to study measures to deal with the efficiency of urban logistics, with the challenging objective of reducing the related externalities of greenhouse gas emissions and noise [5]
Summary
In cities usually affected by critical traffic conditions, high levels of urban freight activities may create additional problems in terms of congestion and environmental impacts [1]. The present study would like to fill some of the knowledge missing at that level, since it focuses on the development of a methodology that can help cities to investigate a specific aspect characterizing and influencing their mobility, namely the observation of freight deliveries from the demand side, i.e. through the observation of the delivery points in urban areas. This is hopefully achieved by proposing an innovative approach that exploits GPS traces, firstly, to analyze the places where a fleet of logistics vehicles is delivering or picking up parcels. In the final phase of the research the survey instrument was tested into one of those points
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