Transport Studies Group

Modelling Policy Measures and Company Initiatives for Sustainable Urban Distribution

Report Authors:
Julian Allen, Graham Tanner, Michael Browne, Stephen Anderson, Georgina Christodoulou and Peter Jones.

January 2003

The main aim of the project has been to investigate the extent to which policy measures and company initiatives are likely to result in changes in patterns of goods flows and goods vehicle activity in different types of urban distribution operation. Policy measures tested include Low Emission Zones, congestion charging, weight and access time restrictions.

Analysis has been carried out into how these changes in goods vehicle collection and delivery patterns will affect the cost and efficiency of the goods collection/delivery operation, and the social and environmental impacts.

Consideration has also been given to whether the policy measures examined are likely to lead to similar outcomes for a range of urban distribution operations carried out in the three urban areas studied.

The intention of the project has been to:

Show how current distribution operations vary for the same company in three different urban areas (Birmingham, Norwich and Basingstoke);

Make comparisons between different types of current operations in the same urban area;

Indicate how distribution operations and performance may change if new policy measures were introduced;

Indicate whether the same policy measures are likely to result in the same or different outcomes in the three urban areas.

The project was funded by the EPSRC and the Department for Transport as part of the Future Integrated Transport Programme.

The project was finished in September 2002, and this technical report was made available in January 2003.

The following documents are available for downloading in Adobe Acrobat format:

Final Technical Report (4146k)

Appendices (3227k)

Alternatively these documents can be downloaded in Zip format:

Zip file containing both the above documents (2922k)