Freight facilities for central business district office buildings

Abstract

Inadequate end-point facilities in office buildings for shipping and receiving freight are partly due to a lack of understanding of the urban goods movement problem by architects and engineers and partly due to inadequate municipal freight facility by-laws. The problems created by inadequate freight facilities impose a wide range of environmental, social, and economic impacts on an urban area. Because of the magnitude and extent of these impacts engineers involved with the planning, design, and approval of office buildings must take an increasingly comprehensive view of the range of factors that should be considered in the design and operation of office building freight facilities.This paper is based on a recently completed study of urban freight facilities conducted by the Department of Civil Engineering of The University of Calgary for the City of Calgary Transportation Department. The study included measurement of arrival rates and service times of delivery trucks, couriers, and service vehicles at office buildings in Calgary. These measurements, in addition to a survey of existing freight facilities in central business district office buildings, formed the basis for the development of a proposal to revise existing zoning by-laws regarding freight facilities. The primary deficiency of existing Calgary by-laws is that they overstate the need for delivery vehicle facilities by a factor of two for larger office buildings and neglect the space requirements for couriers and service vehicles. The paper includes a comparison of freight facility by-laws for office buildings in a number of selected Canadian cities.