Abstract
The potential effects of implementing longer and heavier vehicles (LHVs) in road freight transport have been studied in various countries, nationally and internationally, in Europe. These studies have focused on the implementation of LHVs on certain types of commodities and the experience from countries like Finland and Sweden, which have a long tradition of using LHVs, and in which LHVs used for all types of commodities have not been widely utilised. This study aimed to assess the impacts of long and heavy vehicles on various commodities in the United Kingdom based on the Finnish experiences in order to estimate the possible savings in road freight transport vehicle kilometres, costs, and CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom if LHVs would be introduced and used similarly to in Finland in the transport of various commodities. The study shows that the savings of introducing longer and heavier vehicles in the United Kingdom would be 1.5–2.6 billion vehicle kms, £0.7–1.5 billion in transport costs, and 0.35–0.72 Mt in CO2 emissions. These findings are well in line with previous findings in other countries. The results confirm that considerable savings in traffic volume and emissions can be achieved and the savings are very likely to outweigh possible effects of modal shift from rail to road.
Highlights
Road freight transport contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions and its importance is likely to increase in the future as passenger vehicles may be electrified more and the energy sector increasingly utilises renewable energy sources in order to mitigate climate change
In terms of economic structure, the countries differ, as agriculture, forestry, fishing, and industry represent 24% of Finnish gross value added (GVA), but only 14% in the United Kingdom, whereas in the United Kingdom the wholesale and retail, financial and scientific sectors constitute a larger share of total GVA than in Finland (Table 2)
The potential effects of implementing longer and heavier vehicles (LHVs) in road freight transport have been studied in various countries nationally and internationally in Europe
Summary
Road freight transport contributes significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions and its importance is likely to increase in the future as passenger vehicles may be electrified more and the energy sector increasingly utilises renewable energy sources in order to mitigate climate change. Measures can be broadly catergorised using the ASIF framework to avoiding journeys (A), modal shift (S), lowering transport energy intensity (I), and reducing carbon intensity of fuels (F) [2]. One of the most effective ways to avoid journeys and reduce energy intensity per unit of payload transported of road freight, resulting in reduced CO2 emissions, is to increase the size of road freight vehicles. Provided their payload capacity is fully utilized, larger vehicles are always significantly more fuel efficient per tonne of payload than the smaller vehicles they replace [3]
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