The Urban Freight Transportation Planning Process PDF Download

Urban freight transportation includes postal deliveries, delivery of inventory or building material to commercial businesses and construction projects, delivery of food, and waste collection. Despite the extent of known negative external impacts of freight transport on air pollution, safety, and congestion, a relatively small number of cities are taking a comprehensive approach to mitigating impacts of urban freight transport through planning practices. This research acknowledges as a starting point that local freight transport should exist more harmoniously with residents in urban areas through decreasing emissions, fatalities, and congestion. I argue that public agencies should lead planning processes for sustainable urban freight transport inclusive of industry stakeholders to develop context-sensitive solutions. As the conversation of sustainable urban mobility has become more popular in the past two decades, I investigate the extent to which sustainable urban transport has permeated this conversation. This research evaluates if and how local public agencies plan for sustainable urban freight transportation in 12 international cities selected from the Atlas of Urban Expansion. A small sample size was used to develop a framework for gauging how prevalent sustainable urban freight transport planning is across cities in eight world regions. The findings of this report observe that of 12 cities, 1 city has an approved plan for sustainable urban freight transportation. The concept of sustainable urban passenger transport is much more pervasive across cities in the sample than sustainable urban freight transport. Urban freight appears to be often overlooked in many transportation planning processes. The report finds that non-governmental organizations, nonprofits, and researchers should make sustainable urban freight transport an added focus in applied research and reporting efforts related to sustainable urban mobility with partner cities or countries moving forward