Abstract
Time restriction and logistics sprawl (e.g., relocating logistics facilities), as two popular urban policies, usually affect the urban freight and environmental burden, but their combination might lead to unexpected results. This paper analyzes the impact of time restriction and logistics sprawl on urban freight and local environments based on a Beijing agricultural freight case through traffic simulation. The data is derived through a freight demand forecasting method. Based on the data, this paper constructs four groups of scenarios to represent different policies (or combined policies) and then conducts macro-simulation to obtain the economic and environmental indicators. Results show that (1) time restriction can increase the freight costs and slightly decrease local emissions, while logistics sprawl can increase both costs and emissions; (2) the joint implementation of the two policies are proved to be positive in economic and environmental aspects because it helps freight carriers adopt a new strategy to improve delivery efficiency; (3) urban freight policies are closely related to the freight carriers because different responses from carriers can lead to different policy effects.
Highlights
Urban freight constantly contributes to city unsustainability [1,2,3]
This paper estimates the impact of time restriction and logistics sprawl on urban freight and the environment based on the case of Beijing agricultural freight by utilizing the combination of traffic simulation and quantitative models
Four groups of scenarios were constructed by combining different urban policies with responses from freight carriers and these were used for simulation
Summary
Due to the pressure of traffic congestion and environmental pollution, many government agencies have implemented the time restriction policy that freight vehicles can only enter urban areas at certain intervals. Logistics sprawl might increase the freight carriers’ pressure and environmental burden because it might result in extra vehicle kilometer trip (VKT) and external trip [10] Speaking, both policies are usually considered to negatively influence urban freight. The paper explores the relationships between background factors and policy effectiveness from the economic perspective To solve all these problems above, we chose the case of Beijing agricultural freight, in which freight carriers suffer from both the time restriction and logistics sprawl policies.
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