Identifying the Need for Freight to be Included in Local Authority Transport Planning - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 37

1 Introduction
Urban freight transport has during the last couple of decades gained more and
more attention, both in the research arena and in the large amount of policy
measures that have been trialled throughout Europe. Local authorities are slowly
beginning to acknowledge the need to consider freight transport in their transport
planning processes. Even though urban areas and freight movement activities are
different around the world, they all have in common that they are complex and
difficult to understand (Dablanc 2011 ). This chapter addresses the common per-
ceptions about what constitutes urban freight and the similarities of interactions
between local authorities and freight transport stakeholders in different urban
areas. The purpose is to present the similarities in the way that local authorities
perceive urban freight problems and to motivate a more thorough transport
planning process. Furthermore, to demonstrate that by including a wider variety of
freight stakeholders in urban transport planning discussions, the urban transport
planning process could be improved.
The chapter is structured as follows: Firstly, we present an introduction to the
urban freight transport planning and decision making process, followed with a
description of the methodology adopted for the research. Thereafter the findings
from the interviews are presented across four themes: how local authorities con-
sider urban freight; how urban freight is recognised; how urban freight is managed;
and the current levels of stakeholder involvement in the transport planning pro-
cesses. The chapter concludes with a summary discussion of results and some final
thoughts.
2 The Urban Freight Transport Planning and Decision
Making Process
There are several references discussing the importance of integrated transport
planning and decision support models for transport policy decision making
(including: Bertolini et al. 2005 ; May and Roberts 1995 ; and Potter and Skinner
2000 ). However, there is a lack of appropriate theory and models aimed at spe-
cifically handling urban freight transport (Crainic et al. 2009 ). May et al. ( 2012 )
also highlights the need for better models and methods for decision support and
suggests a generation tool for policy packages. In addition, several references
(Muñuzuri et al. 2005 ; and Muñuzuri et al. 2012a ) evaluate and suggest possible
measures that could be implemented to solve various urban freight problems.
There are examples of models or computational processes and algorithms that
try to solve or support transport planning by for example finding optimal locations
for hubs of different kinds. Muñuzuri et al. ( 2012b ) shows one example of optimal
locating, which are referred to as 'mini hubs'. These 'mini hubs' would replace
traditional loading zones and time window restrictions, which are currently used