Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the role and preference of retailers that, in the context studied, play a relevant role
(Quack and de Koster 2009 ).
3 Survey Instrument and Data Description
This paper is based on data acquired in Rome's LTZ between March and
December 2009 thanks to a project carried out for Volvo Research Foundation
( 2009 ). The LTZ in the city center of Rome was first implemented in the late 80s
over a 5 km 2 area originally banned to non-resident vehicles only. Only Euro 1
and more fuel-efficient vehicles are allowed to enter the LTZ with free access
granted to residents while others (e.g. retailers and freight carriers) pay an access
fee. Cameras and optical character recognition software are used to enforce the
system which operates diurnally with a yearly entrance fee of 565€ per number
plate.
Notwithstanding the extensive list of impediments applying generically to all
agents a wide ranging of ad hoc exemptions applies to third party freight operators.
The regulation, after a careful reading of all the exemptions conceded, seems
mostly targeted to discouraging own-account operators.
As it is for the questionnaire development it is important to first define, select,
develop and customize the attributes to be included in the questionnaire which, in
our case, was a SRE since it was considered most appropriate to use a ranking
exercise given the final aim was to unveil agents' preferences concerning UGM
policies which are not de facto ''chosen''. The project involved different phases
among which the most important are: (1) advancement from stakeholder consul-
tation to final attribute selection criteria; (2) attribute definition; (3) levels and
ranges selection; (4) progressive design differentiation by agent-type (Stathopoulos
et al. 2011 ).
The SRE alternatives are characterized by a set of attributes, which can take
several levels. The attributes considered were selected thanks to: (1) literature
survey; (2) previous UGM studies performed in Rome; (3) focus groups with
experts. An in depth review of the literature adopting an agent-based perspective
allowed the identification of a set of eligible attributes that represented potentially
conflicting policy instruments. 5
Previous UGM studies in Rome (STA 2001 ; Filippi and Campagna 2008 )
together with expert and stakeholder focus groups were very useful in guiding the
attribute selection process 6
that were characterized by high and shared support of
5 Nighttime deliveries, for instance, were considered efficiency enhancing by carriers but
considered a mere increase in costs by retailers and were consequently excluded.
6 An important phase of the expert surveys focused on defining the policies considered most
appropriate to mitigate the identified UGM problems (Stathopoulos et al. 2011 ). Volvo Report
( 2010 ) provides a detailed overview of the link between the stakeholder survey results and the
attributes used in the SRE.
Search WWH ::




Custom Search