Urban Goods Movement and Local Climate Action Plans: Assessing Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Urban Freight Transportation

This report examines how freight transport/goods movement has been addressed in U.S. city climate action planning. Transportation generally is a major contributor of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and freight transport represents a growing component of transportation’s share. Almost all climate action plans (CAPs) address transportation generally, but we wished to focus on efforts to reduce GHG emissions from freight transport specifically. We analyzed 27 advanced local CAPs to determine the degree to which freight transport was targeted in goals and strategies to reduce GHG emissions. We found only six CAPs that included direct measures or programs to reduce freight emissions. Many of the CAPs mentioned general transportation objectives such as lowering vehicle miles traveled or reducing emissions from city-owned vehicle fleets, but most did not include strategies or actions that explicitly targeted freight transport. We identified the specific strategies and actions that cities are taking to address GHG emissions from freight transport, such as working with the freight community to promote anti-idling and encourage transitions to electric and alternative fuel delivery vehicles. We also analyzed freight transport plans relevant for the same cities, and found that most do not explicitly mention reducing GHG emissions. Most of the freight plans are focused on improving reliability and efficiency of freight movement, which would likely have the ancillary benefit of reducing GHG emissions, but that goal was not explicitly targeted in most of these plans. Based on our findings, we recommend that cities specifically target freight transport goals and strategies in their CAPs and better coordinate with planners developing freight transport plans to identify GHG emission reduction approaches

Decoupling economic development and freight for reducing its negative impacts

This paper takes a look at the development of freight transport and its further perspectives in thelight of environmental sustainability. It clearly challenges the traditional view that furthergrowth in freight transport is indispensable whatever stage of economic development an indi-vidual economy has achieved. Moreover it suggests measures to be taken into consideration insectors other than the transport sector which may help to break the trend of continuing freighttransport growth. Current developments of freight transport volume and modal split are rathercounterproductive as regards curbing the unwanted environmental impacts. As growth in vol-ume is a major contributing factor for most adverse effects caused, a substantial decoupling ofeconomic growth and freight transport would be extremely helpful. While freight transportactivity is almost entirely derived demand there can be no sufficient solution for the resultingenvironmental problems within the sector itself. Therefore, it is necessary to examine potentialsfor reducing demand for freight transport in all sectors of the economy. Contrasting to thewidely held view that freight transport is in general an inevitable prerequisite of economicdevelopment, there are potentials for reducing the freight intensity of the economy which couldbe far more exploited. Such potentials are increasing the share of regional production, slowingdown the metabolism of materials in the economy, and substituting transfer of information fortransport of physical products. While each of these potentials on its own may appear to offerlimited effects, a proper combination might yield substantial results. The presented preliminaryideas suggest that the notion of everlasting freight transport growth is misleading and hint at thenecessity for further research. --

The relevance of the concepts of specific and generic goods for the understanding of freight transport demand

In this paper, we investigate the theoretical and empirical relevance of the distinction between generic goods and specific goods for the understanding of freight transport demand. Specific goods are Taylor-made for a single customer while generic goods are produced irrespective of the final customer who will buy them. Theoretically, the distinction lays on a different relationship with time, based for specific goods on a trade-off between transport duration and cost, and for generic goods on optimal stock. The distinction affects shippers’ valuation of freight transport attributes such as value of time, value of transport time reliability and value of the risk of loss and damages. The theoretical analysis has not so far been able to establish conclusively how shippers’ valuation of freight transport attributes is affected by the type of good produced. Hence, some empirical evidence derived from stated preference data collected among Italian shippers is used to shed some light on the topic.generic good, specific good, freight transport, freight service evaluation, stated preferences.

National and international freight transport models: overview and ideas for further development

This paper contains a review of the literature on freight transport models, focussing on the types of models that have been developed since the nineties for forecasting, policy simulation and project evaluation at the national and international level. Models for production, attraction, distribution, modal split and assignment are discussed in the paper. Furthermore, the paper also includes a number of ideas for future development, especially for the regional and urban components within national freight transport models

Comparative Analysis of European Examples of Freight Electric Vehicles Schemes—A Systematic Case Study Approach with Examples from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK.

E-Mobility is a hot topic, in the public policy area as well as in business and scientific communities. Literature on electric freight transport is still relatively scarce. Urban freight transport is considered as one of the most promising fields of application of vehicle electrification, and there are on-going demonstration projects. This paper will discuss case study examples of electric freight vehicle initiatives in Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the UK and identify enablers and barriers for common trends

The technological model of operating area by the combined transport

The contribution deals with design technology service model using the combined transport. It assesses the performance indicators in relation to price and quality of services provided and on this basis decides on the type of the transport. This is the decision-making processes, which should answer the question, whether used directly in road freight transport, direct rail freight transport or combined transport. In this contribution is the combined transport meant as a system between the conventional modes, which are transhipped goods from road vehicles to the rail cars or river boats

Decarbonizing Freight Transport

This Open-Access-Book analyzes the acceptance of sustainable freight transport and suggests a new framework for policy measures to decarbonize freight transport. Despite intense political endeavors, the environmental performance of the transport system has not improved in the previous years. It seems that the existing measures are not sufficient to motivate transport users to implement sustainable freight transport strategies. The case of three different strategies for sustainable freight transport is studied: horizontal collaboration in a Physical Internet network, multimodal freight transport and liquefied natural gas (LNG) as alternative truck fuel. Each of these three strategies falls within a different pillar of the avoid-shift-reduce framework. The determinants of acceptance and suggested policy measures in this study reflect transport users’ needs towards sustainable freight transport. This should support policy makers and the logistics industry to implement sustainable practices and achieve the ambitious emission targets by decarbonizing freight transport

Evaluation of Performances of Intermodal Import-Export Freight Transport System in Ethiopia

Freight transport system that minimizes costs, increase conveniences, and environmentally safe has become the agenda worldwide since long before. This study was made with the main objective of assessing intermodal termed as “multimodal” freight transport service in Ethiopia. Data was collected by using structured questionnaire from randomly selected customers and multimodal freight transport section employees of Ethiopian Shipping and Logistics Service Enterprise. The study was made in two stages using customers: first, they were asked to evaluate their satisfaction with the multimodal freight transport system; second, to evaluate their comparative satisfaction with the segmented/“uni-modal” freight transport system against five major freight transport performance indicators. Customers were also asked to identify and rank top ten problems of freight transport logistics in Ethiopia. Data were analyzed using SPSS and excel sheets with descriptive statistics and the results were depicted using charts and tables. The study indicated that majority of customers were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with many of the performance indicators. The employees evaluated their organization as well performing relatively on more performance indicators. Both customers and employees evaluated the documentation performances as satisfying but cost and convenience as dissatisfying performances. Customers identified repetitive custom checking and waste of time in custom inspections process as the most severe problem in freight transport logistics in Ethiopia. The implementation of intermodal freight transport system to bring better change in import-export freight transport logistics of Ethiopia was in bitter challenge for customers due to a number of problems, except documentation performance that showed betterment

Sustainability intervention mechanisms for managing road freight transport externalities: A systematic literature review

With road freight transport continuing to dominate global freight transport operations, there is increasing pressure on the freight transport industry and its stakeholders to address concerns over its sustainability. This paper adopts a systematic review to examine the academic literature on road freight transport sustainability between 2001 and 2018. Using content and thematic analysis, the paper identifies and categorises sustainability intervention mechanisms providing useful insights on key research applications areas and continental distribution of sustainable road freight transport (SRFT) research. In addition to the six-overarching sustainability intervention mechanism themes identified: decoupling, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), modality, operations, policy, and other, future research can explore the effectiveness of different interventions mechanisms identified in this study to improve sustainable practices across different continents

Urban freight transport from a local authority perspective – a literature review

On the path towards sustainability for the urban area, local authorities make decisions that affect freight transport. However, in many ways, urban freight transport is a neglected issue. The purpose of this paper is to map out the current status of urban freight transport research from a local authority perspective. A literature review is performed, looking through research in urban freight transport during the last 15 years. The review presents a large amount of references and it is clear that the area of urban freight transport has gained a larger interest during the later part of the time period studied. Research mainly focuses on freight measures (pilot actions) performed in an urban context, but the local authority perspective is lacking in many aspect s. The review shows some areas that local authorities need to consider when working with freight transport in the urban area, according to the literature: measures; monitoring and evaluation; performance indicators; transfer of knowledge between cities/cou ntries; and, stakeholder involvement