Workforce Development Resources

Freight transport in urban areas is not as efficient as it could be. Since freight transport has a large proportion of emissions from traffic, this is an area that needs to be addressed by all actors involved. Freight transport has in recent years gained a more important role in urban planning in large cities in Europe. However, the medium and small cities also need to address the problem in the decision making process. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate how Swedish small and medium sized cities deal with urban freight transport and to frame the problem of urban freight transport planning from a local authority perspective. Interviews with and questionnaires to decision makers are the basis for the evaluation of the possibilities for countering the challenge. City logistic schemes implemented in a large city are not always suitable for a smaller city and maybe not even for another city of the same size. The contribution of this paper is two-fold. A process planning model is presented based on the results, which is a practical tool for local authority decision makers in their planning process, but it is also a theoretical contribution, valuable for future research in urban freight transport planning studies.

Freight transport in urban areas is still not well understood and there is no methodology aimed at the analysis and planning of such areas. To achieve urban sustainability, new models for the management of urban freight movements are needed, in which local authorities play a pro-active role. The aim of this paper is to contribute to lay the groundwork for designing strategies to overcome the challenges involved in sustainable urban freight transport. This paper is based on a multiple-case study analyzing the current state of urban freight transport and current planning practices in cities around the Baltic Sea. While the cities differ in size, economy, and political and cultural frameworks, the transport sector plays a strong role in all cities. In-depth freight interviews with public and private stakeholders were conducted and complemented with several holistic interview sessions and document analysis. Potentials and shortcomings in urban freight transport planning are presented and the results show that freight transport is increasingly important for regional competitiveness while freight traffic is a growing threat for urban sustainability. In turn, the urban context is a barrier for efficient freight operations. However, both local authorities and transport operators neglect the problems that arise from freight in urban areas. An overall awareness is needed to understand that a deeper integration of freight transport and urban sustainability strategies can be beneficial for both the efficiency of freight transport networks and for local sustainability. City authorities need more logistics competence to facilitate the required integration between private and public actors.

Today, many cities in the world struggle with an increasing demand arising from quick population changes. Most European big cities experience congestions, pollutions, saturations, uncollected waste, public dissatisfaction, and unpleasant environment to work and live in. In order to respond properly and effectively to these phenomena, city authorities are forced to take speedy and right decisions of ensuring good living conditions for all the residents. Reorganizing, rebuilding and enlarging cities is a difficult task which in many cases is on the boundary of impossible because of historical reasons, heritage and preservation of environment. Urban Consolidation, however, might be a good solution. In this paper we introduce urban and urban freight consolidation concepts, where our aim is to identify and reveal missing knowledge to the current state of the art.

Urban freight transport is becoming more and more important in Switzerland and also other countries. On the one hand we face negative impacts on the environment and society and on the other hand urban freight distribution is getting more and more costly and less reliable due to traffic jams. Within a Swiss project the goods supply and transport in conurbations has been investigated, key factors and sustainability indicators derived, an evaluation frame for measures developed, measures and strategies for more sustainable goods supply and transport carried out and assessed and an implementation plan developed. Within a follow up project guidelines for freight planning in urban areas have been carried out. During the City Logistics Conference in Crete in 2007 the first results of the national research project Sustainable Goods Supply and Transport in Conurbations (Agglomerations) (2006-2009) have been presented. Especially the results on Freight indicators and development in conurbations, key factors for urban freight development and relevance of freight transport, locations requirements for logistics and freight transport facilities and acceptance of urban freight measures. This paper provides further results on the institutional integration of freight transport in public planning, on urban freight measures and strategies and on the implementation of measures and success factors.

The Transport Planning Society (TPS) launched a planning skills initiative in the UK. TPS identified needs for stronger personal identity for transport planning and has been working with the Universities Transport Partnership to develop planning skills requirements (National Occupational Standards).

Although ridesharing can provide a wealth of benefits, such as reduced travel costs, congestion, and consequently less pollution, there are a number of challenges that have restricted its widespread adoption. In fact, even at a time when improving communication systems provide real-time detailed information that could be used to facilitate ridesharing, the share of work trips that use ridesharing has decreased by almost 10% in the past 30 years. In this paper we present a classification to understand the key aspects of existing ridesharing systems. The objective is to present a framework that can help identify key challenges in the widespread use of ridesharing and thus foster the development of effective formal ridesharing mechanisms that would overcome these challenges and promote massification.

The paper is based on work carried out as part of the Green Logistics project. The paper provides a review of urban freight studies that have taken place in the UK over approximately a thirty year period from the early 1970s to the present (this is the first attempt at such a review in the UK as far as the authors are aware). Coverage of both goods collection and delivery vehicle activity and service vehicle activity is included. This review covers the survey techniques used, as well as the survey results obtained. Comparisons are made between the results of studies from the 1970s and those carried out in the last decade in order to gain insight to changes in urban freight transport operations.

The data provided in the studies reviewed is extremely important as it provides insight into urban freight operations that is unavailable from any other data source, including national freight surveys conducted by government. However, until now, the results of these studies have not been widely disseminated or compared.

This paper reviews the options available to policy makers in their efforts to reduce the negative impacts of urban freight transport. After providing a summary of the categories of negative impacts that can be targeted together with the specific policy initiatives available, it reviews the actions taken by policy makers across in cities within four countries (UK, Japan, the Netherlands and France). In the case of the UK and Japan attention is focused on a single city as an exemplar of some of the developments. In the case of the Netherlands and France the discussion is wider.

GO! Is a free online magazine for teens and young adults that explores the world of transportation and the careers that they can find there. GO! Is an instrumental tool for career outreach and covers topics from environment issues to teen related transportation issues.

E-commerce, like many other information technology (IT)-based activities, also offers the potential substitution of telecommunications for travel, resulting in a trade-off between virtual and physical travel. The aim of this paper is to explore whether and how the increasing opportunities for purchasing and information gathering offered by information technologies affect shopping-related travel. The paper will attempt to explore the question of substitution by modelling output of consumer decisions on mode of purchase. Then, this will be combined with clustering the population according to their affinity to IT and finally by identifying the differences in the socio-economic attributes of the different clusters.