Sustainability of Urban Freight Transport: Retail Distribution and Local Regulations in CitiesAlthough our urbanized civilization requires freight transport in order to sustain it, urban freight transport is especially recognized for its unsustainable impacts. To reduce the unsustainable impacts of urban freight transport, many local governments develop policies that focus sometimes more on banning or restricting urban transport than on making it more sustainable. In the first part of this thesis we develop a framework to structure the urban freight transport field and to review urban fraight transport sustainability initiatives. The number of initiatives that is succesfully implemented in practice turns out to be quite low. In the review and the following analysis, we try to find the barriers for succesful implementation of the initiatives in practice. In the seond part we examine the impacts of the most commonly used local sustainability policies. Six time-window scenarios and their impacts on the economical, environmental and social sustainability are examined based on a multiple case study. Time-window regulations increase both the environmental and distribution costs. Retail chains are affected differently by time-window pressure and vehicle restrictions due to differences in their logical concept. based on an experiment we examine the effects of retailers' logical decisions in combination with local sustainability policies. Next, we examine the degree to which retailers are able te deal with problems caused by time-windows. Combining the primary and secondary distribution, i.e. factory gate pricing, results in more sustainable distribution operations for the retailer and in less sensivity towards time-window regulations. |
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authorities backhauling base scenario cargotram carriers chapter city centres city logistics combined congestion consolidation centre cost increase customised decrease delivery frequency department store retailer dimensions discuss Distribution performance Dutch store efficiency factory gate pricing fashion retailer Figure fractional factorial design framework freight transport sustainability geographical store dispersion impacts implemented in practice infrastructure initiatieven Logistical concept Matlog Netherlands Neuteboom number of kilometres number of vehicles OECD operations organisation pick policy measures pollution primary distribution reduce retail chains retailer's distribution centre retailers whose roundtrips road pricing roll containers secondary distribution shows stakeholders stedelijke distributie store and DC store deliveries suppliers sustainability issues swap body Table time-window length time-window policies time-window restrictions total number TRAIL Thesis Series transhipment transport sustainability initiatives trucks UFTS initiatives unloading urban areas urban freight transport variable vehicle capacity vehicle load factor vehicle restrictions vehicle roundtrip vehicle routing problem vehicle utilisation Vlist window