Data Collection for Understanding Urban Goods Movement - Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and Information Systems - page 72

also previously examined urban freight data in 17 selected European countries, in
terms of the availability of such data (BESTUFS 2000 , 2003 ).
The methodology for road freight data that is required to be collected and
submitted to Eurostat by Member States under Council Regulation 1172/98 is also
reviewed at regular meetings of members of national transport ministries/depart-
ments. This road freight data is typically published at a national level but contains
data about urban freight transport activity within it (Eurostat 2006 ).
3 Changes in Urban Freight Data Collection
The availability of urban freight data has tended to remain the same or improve in
the surveyed countries over the last five years (Browne et al. 2007 ). In countries in
which urban freight data availability has improved this has either been the result of
new national freight surveys from which urban activity can be disaggregated (for
example, the company-registered van survey by the UK Government Department
for Transport and the KID survey carried out in Germany in 2002), or one-off
projects and data collection efforts at an urban scale (for example survey work in
the Italian cities of Rome, Milan and the Emilia Romanga region, data collection
in Liege and Ghent in Belgium, urban freight transport profiling in the Dutch cities
of Amsterdam, Utrecht and Rotterdam as part of the Connekt MG-11 project, and
survey work in UK urban areas including Ealing and Bexleyheath in London, and
Newton Abbot in Devon as part of Freight Quality Partnerships).
Some of the most innovative, large-scale urban freight transport data collection
and modelling exercises in Europe took place in France approximately twelve
years ago. Some one-off urban surveys have taken place in French cities since then
but on a far smaller scale.
It should be noted that in some of the countries surveyed such as Hungary and
Portugal there have been few efforts to collect urban freight data in mid 90s.
However, this situation is expected to improve in Portugal over the next five years
as a result of increasing congestion and concern about environmental problems.
In several other countries, experts expect urban freight data collection to
improve over the next five years as a result of it receiving greater attention from
policymakers as they attempt to improve its efficiency and reduce its negative
impacts.
4 Country Comparison of Urban Freight Data Collected
The freight experts surveyed were asked about the existence of a range of cate-
gories of urban freight data in their country. The experts identified relevant urban
freight data sources for each of these categories and provided information about
the issues concerning these sources including the name of the survey/data source,