How to Improve the Capture of Urban Goods Movement Data?

The surveys specifically focused on the thorough knowledge of urban freight transport appeared about ten years ago. The local problematic of goods transport at local level was partially taken into account by the city planners and by the researchers: until recent years, the integration of goods transport in the total urban flows models was estimated applying a multiplying factor to car traffic. Delivering goods was not considered like a concern.Because of the quick growth of car traffic in the cities, the main stakes changed too: the fight against traffic congestion, the management of the lack of space (shipment consolidation and storage), the attempts to reduce local environmental impacts and global externalities (energy saving, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions), and economic valuation of city centres (under the pressure of a slowed down economic growth).All these changes were taking place in a context in which available rooms for manoeuvre were limited by factors such as congestion, concerns about the quality of urban life and budget restriction. It resulted in a growing unease on the freight transport industry and the city authorities, the latter having little or no data, methods and references in order to elaborate a satisfactory policy framework.surveys on urban freight transport ; urban freight movements ; urban freight data collection ; urban goods data collection ; diversity of measurement units and methods ; state of the art

Urban Goods Movement and Sydney’s Economy

Freight transport is a key component of the role for roads in the national economy, particularly in urban areas, but our understanding of the urban freight transport system is very limited. Until recently there were minimal recent data available on urban goods movement in Australia, but data collection in several States and Sydney has partially relieved this situation. This paper discusses analysis of freight data collected in the Sydney Commercial Vehicle Survey (CVS). Broad analysis of the 1991/92 CVS of the Greater Sydney Metropolitan Region was undertaken to determine the patterns and behaviour of freight carrying vehicles. The survey was in the form of a mail-out, mail-back self-completion questionnaire and was undertaken by the Transport Data Centre, a section within the Department of Transport, NSW. The majority of the paper is drawn from the principal author’s thesis on Urban freight activities in Sydney, undertaken at Monash University. Results of the CVS are discussed with specific reference to temporal patterns, trip lengths, trip durations, and the temporal distributions of pick-ups and deliveries. These factors are also discussed in the context of the Sydney network and economy, and particularly in relation to the implications for transport planning and policy

GPS Data Analysis for Understanding Urban Goods Movement

AbstractThis paper aims to investigate the contribution of GPS survey techniques for urban goods movement characterization and diagnosis, more precisely the implementation and application issues related to the introduction of real-time data transmission procedures and phone tools with integrated GPS devices. We propose a GPS-based data collection method for urban freight route characterization using a Smartphone application. After testing and calibrating the data processing tool, we analyze the main results on a baseline of about 900 rounds, with the R software. This analysis allows us to define the characteristics of the overall routes as well as the environmental impacts linked with the categories of roads: urban highways, main roads and residential streets. Moreover, the study shows that the environmental behavior of the driver is connected with the main activity of the carriers. The complementarity between GPS and traditional urban freight surveys is finally discussed

Demand and routing models for urban goods movement simulation

This paper presents a macro-architecture for simulating goods movements in an urban area. Urban goods supply is analysed when the retailer is the decision-maker and chooses to supply his/her shop. Two components are considered: demand in terms of goods supply and vehicle routing with constraints to simulate goods movements. To analyse demand we consider a multi-step model, while to analyse goods movements a Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW) is formalized. We examine the distribution process for a VRPTW in which the optimum paths between all the customers are combined to determine the best vehicle trip chain. As regard optimum path search, a multipath approach is proposed that entails the generation of more than one path between two delivery points. Some procedures (traffic assignment, real time system measurement, reverse assignment) to estimate system performance are also proposed. Finally, heuristics to solve the proposed problem are reported and their results are compared with those exact