Shaping Urban Freight Systems via a Participatory Approach to Inform Policy-Making

Abstract

In the upcoming era of new technologies, a transport system is expected to be ‘more sustainable,’ ‘safer,’ and ‘more efficient.’ However, to what extent is this true? Based on the results of a series of stakeholder engagement workshops, the paper explores the vision of different stakeholders about urban freight of the future. A Participatory Approach was used to allow stakeholders to identify the problem and co-design a set of solutions. Potential impacts of innovative urban deliveries on economy, environment, and society were analysed. Methodology and results were then compared with those of a city stakeholder engagement workshop delivered in Newcastle upon-Tyne in 2014. Stakeholders considered that an “engaging” and “easy to use” process was needed to facilitate the process and it encouraged participants to find solutions for a ‘common good.’ The participatory approach proposed in this process would support transport planners and policy-makers to design and implement a consistent policy framework for future sustainable urban freight systems.

Using the Delphi Method to Evaluate the Appropriateness of Urban Freight Transport Solutions

“…Both tools identify stakeholders and their criteria, assign respective weights, and score the alternatives on the criteria. A limitation of the tools is that the set of alternative solutions included in the evaluation process is not selected by the evaluators [8].…”

“…Achieving UFT effectiveness heavily relies on stakeholder engagement [6,7]. Successful collaborative partnerships among stakeholder groups result in high impact policy design that considers and addresses city's relevant logistical needs [8]. Freight Quality Partnerships (FQPs), Freight advisory boards and forums, and Designation of a City Logistics Manager (CLM) are some well-identified ways to bring together stakeholders to discuss problems, set objectives, and identify and implement solutions.…”

A Multi-Criteria Structure for Sustainable Implementation of Urban Distribution Centers in Historical Cities

“…The relevant stakeholders in the urban distribution of goods include transport operators, local authorities, residents who live in the urban area and retailers. The different interests of these stakeholders contribute to the complexity of the distribution of goods [3], and the engagement of these stakeholders [7] in a workshop can be a key point to meet their needs and to design a better urban freight distribution system [8].…”

“…Since this study considers the distribution of goods in dense areas as a challenge [8,9], specifically in historical city centers, substantially occupied with residents and tourists, and with no empty space available for building facilities, some requirements should be listed. The main problem, in this case, is that historical cities usually contain narrow streets which were not originally designed considering cars, trucks and people.…”

“…Differently to some participatory approaches [8,9,[11][12][13] that involve the stakeholders in a decision-making process interactively, our proposal contributes to the state-of-the-art by providing a generic structure, based on a set of criteria according to the stakeholders' preferences. While the latest studies have discussed the importance of certain criteria to implement UDCs in historical cities [4,5], including the residents' opinion, the present study proposes an innovative methodological approach, which is inspired by the statistical techniques and Multiple-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) concepts, to provide a generic structure that can be applied for implementing UDCs in historical cities.…”