Best Practices in Urban Freight Management: Lessons from an International Survey

摘要

Freight movement is essential to the function of metropolitan areas, yet it generates manyexternalities, including congestion, air pollution, noise, and greenhouse gas emissions.Metropolitan areas around the world are seeking ways to manage urban freight and its impacts.This paper presents results from a comprehensive international survey of urban freightmanagement strategies. Our purpose was to examine the effectiveness of alternative strategiesand assess their transferability for broad US implementation. We use three categories to describeurban freight strategies: last mile/first mile deliveries and pickups, environmental mitigation,and trade node strategies. We find that there are many possibilities for better managing urbanfreight and its impacts including labeling and certification programs, incentive-based voluntaryemissions reductions programs, local land use and parking policies, and more stringent nationalfuel efficiency and emissions standards for heavy duty trucks. More research is needed on intrametropolitanfreight movements and on the effectiveness of existing policies and strategies.