FREIGHT TRANSPORT

摘要

Technical Committee 2.3, Freight Transport, produced two technical reports during the 2012 – 2015 cycle of the World Road Association.The first report, Framework for citywide road freight transport management, addresses road freight transport management (RFTM) as a key contributor to the sustainable development of urban areas.The framework of RFTM is characterised by legal, institutional and strategic aspects and the analysis in the report is based upon case studies from several World Road Association member countries.RFTM issues are complicated and challenging, balancing economic growth and environmental impacts, reducing energy consumption and improving road safety. Added complexity comes from the multiple stakeholders involved in urban freight transport, namely shippers, freight carriers, administrators, residents and others. The different aspirations of private and public entities highlight the benefits of coordination in the process of implementing policy measures. Within the public sector the collaboration among multiple local authorities in the same region, as well as those at regional, national and international level, is required.The report concludes that efficient frameworks, based upon public-private partnerships for performing RFTM initiatives, need to be established to tackle complicated urban freight transport problems in the pursuit of more mobile, sustainable and liveable cities. The features of a framework might be different in different countries, reflecting the economic, historical and cultural development of cities.The second report, Moving freight transport forward – Green, Smart and Efficient, investigates the concept of co-modality, and through identified case studies of good practices, addresses the challenges associated with freight transportation efficiency.The concept of co-modality was defined as the use of each transportation mode in its best configuration to optimise the whole transportation chain. This study focuses on the road mode and its interfaces with the other modes.The analysis of these cases studies showed that the environmental pillar is the primary focus of most of the identified strategies. The economic pillar follows closely in terms of interest by stakeholders, but the social pillar is largely unaddressed, except where it is identified as a tertiary concern. Aside from the focus on sustainability, the main outcome of these strategies was clearly improved logistics, mainly in conjunction with a modal shift from road to another mode.The lack of uniformity in the level of developments of technology (vehicle/infrastructure), policy/regulations, and behaviour/logistics hinders the progression toward an optimised freight transportation system.Cooperation between the stakeholders was identified as a critical factor, necessary for achieving success in any case, but competitiveness and financial benefits are central for the majority of cases.Given the relatively high cost of technology and infrastructure investment strategies, there are barriers to transferring these case studies to other places and contexts. Policy approaches and information and education strategies are better suited for transferability than infrastructure investment strategies, due to their relatively low cost, and being easier to generalize.