City logistics: a chaos between research and policy making? A review

Abstract

Although the interest in urban freight transport is growing, it is commonly seen as an area in which there is, for several reasons, a lack of research, especially if you compare it with the amount of research that deals with passenger transport. The attention of governments especially for urban goods movement has increased over recent years and with that the number of studies in the urban goods movement field. However, the practice of city logistics policies is not very often the result of detailed analyses and evaluations. This is reflected in similar types of regulations repeated through the different cities regardless of their characteristics, the same schedules for time windows and load zones, and the failure to recognise different types of urban distribution which require different types of regulations. Apart from copying regulation frameworks, however, cities hardly share information, knowledge or cooperation. The lack of national or regional bodies dealing with city logistics, as there exist for urban passenger traffic, is significant. In this paper we will address the main research contributions in city logistics and try to illustrate how the research contributions are (not) related to the daily practice of policymaking and town planning. Finally we will end with the conclusion that a real gap exists between research and practice and provide some explanations, conditions and directions for setting up new research projects.

Planning for Urban Freight Transport: An Overview

“…The European research is impressive, covering from individual case studies (Crainic et al, 2004) to regional multi-case sets (Cherrett et al, 2012;Lindholm & Behrends, 2012), from empirical research to comprehensive reviews Planning for Urban Freight Transport 593 (Allen & Browne, 2008;Browne et al, 2007;Van Duin & Quak, 2007), including discussion about governance and performance measures (Emberger, 2004;Russo & Comi, 2011;Visser & Hassall, 2010), policy and institutions (Golob & Regan, 2000;Hull, 2008;Stathopoulos et al, 2012) and sustainability (Anderson et al, 2005;Browne & Allen, 1999). Freight in urban contexts beyond Europe has not been extensively addressed.…”

“…Globally, the challenges of the social and environmental impacts of urban freight transport are generally common in cities even though they are different in terms of geographical, historical and cultural circumstances (Lindholm & Behrends, 2012). Accordingly, it is important to consider the urban freight transport problems, and strategic responses, in their specific urban environmental context because replicating regulations without detailed analysis and evaluation of local characteristics could result in sub-optimal responses for the local urban freight transport system (Van Duin & Quak, 2007).…”

“…Although there is a good level of interest in managing cities for efficient urban freight transport, this area of knowledge remains underdeveloped, particularly regarding the intersection between transport planning, land-use and wider urban planning. Research addressing the impact of traffic in cities has typically focused on private and public passenger transport, as well as active travel modes, while relatively little consideration has been paid to freight transport (Van Duin & Quak, 2007). Consequently, a number of questions about urban freight remain under-explored, including the urban context, economic circumstances and institutional environment for planning for urban freight as well as the challenges for better planning for urban freight.…”

Urban Freight Transport Planning towards Green Goals: Synthetic Environmental Evidence from Tested Results

“…Munuzuri et al [43] classify, with respect to stakeholders and focusing on local administrators, because they are responsible for establishing city regulations regarding traffic and transport. Van Duin and Quak [40] classify according to objectives, but consider only three classes that do not allow identification of the different planning horizons and of the different actors involved in their implementation. Russo and Comi [4] use a classification organized for macro-actions and identify the sustainability outcomes that can be obtained by their implementation.…”

A modelling system for estimating freight quantities attracted by cities

“…Van Duin and Quak [13] have identified three main areas of attention in city logistics: flow improvements (including cooperation between companies, consolidation centres, transport reorganizing and routing improvements), hardware (including infrastructure, parking and unloading facilities) and policy (including licensing and regulation).…”