National Academies Press: OpenBook

Smart Growth and Urban Goods Movement (2013)

Chapter: Chapter 3 - Urban Goods Movement Definition

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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Urban Goods Movement Definition." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Smart Growth and Urban Goods Movement. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22522.
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Page 12
Page 13
Suggested Citation:"Chapter 3 - Urban Goods Movement Definition." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Smart Growth and Urban Goods Movement. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/22522.
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Page 13

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12 C H A P T E R 3 Urban goods movement refers to the movement of goods throughout an urban area. In modern society, jobs and people have specialized roles, meaning that every individual, every household, and every business relies on the trade of goods and services. Moving the people and products required for this trade is essential to a thriving economy and can have important consequences for a community. 3.1 Research into Urban Goods Movement Because of the importance of urban goods movement, a number of different disciplines and sectors study it. For example, civil engineers are interested in providing an adequate infrastruc- ture for these movements, while industrial engineers and logisticians look for ways to optimize their systems. The business community is interested in ways to reduce costs or improve the prof- itability of goods movement. The public sector looks for ways to plan appropriately for goods movement, while the private sector is often focused on cost reductions. Each of these sectors also has different planning horizons. The public sector is often concerned with long-term planning, while the private sector must concern itself with immediate profitability. 3.1.1 Research Areas Urban goods movement is a very large subject, and research about it may take the form of behavioral research, research into relationships between health and the built environment, or models simulating the movement of goods. Quak, Van Duin, and Visser (2008, p. 40) outline 11 core research areas dealing with urban goods movement and city logistics (a term frequently used by non-U.S. academics): 1. Cooperation between or among companies 2. Consolidation centers 3. Transport reorganization 4. Routing improvements 5. e-commerce 6. Infrastructure, parking, and unloading facilities 7. Technological innovations 8. Licensing and regulation 9. Modeling 10. Review discussions 11. Data In addition to the research areas outlined by Quak et al., there has also been recent interest in the environmental impacts of goods movement. Urban Goods Movement Definition

Urban Goods Movement Definition 13 This report is focused on the relationship between the transportation of goods in the urban environment and land-use patterns. Research into this relationship can take many forms. For example, some academic research aims at reducing the number of vehicles required to move the same amount of goods (van Rooijen et al. 2008); some work aims at reducing costs (either mon- etary, environmental, or time costs) (Quak and de Koster 2007); and other research looks at the organizational structure of goods-movement systems—for example, Holguín-Veras et al. (2006) considered the motivations of the key stakeholders in choosing delivery times, and Vleugel and Janic (2004, p. 223) considered vehicle choice, trip planning, route planning, and the decisions of other actors as key decisions in the urban goods-movement system. 3.1.2 Evaluation Metrics Depending on the stakeholders, the motivations for the research, and the variables under evaluation, many different metrics are used in research about urban goods movement. Indeed, an entire research area is dedicated to developing freight performance metrics. The purpose of the work presented here is not to develop or evaluate such metrics; however, identifying relevant metrics is necessary to quantify the impacts of various land-use forms. Common metrics used in logistics include vehicle miles or kilometers traveled (VMT/VKT) (Cairns 1998), driving time (Allen et al. 2003), greenhouse-gas emissions (Siikavirta et al. 2002), number of vehicles required (van Rooijen et al. 2008), monetary costs (Quak and de Koster 2009), and tonnage moved. In their study of urban freight, Marquez et al. (2004, pp. 194–5) identified the following as rel- evant performances measures: reducing the number of vehicles required to service the freight task, reducing the number of trips, reducing the trip length, reducing VKT for the given freight task, reducing fuel consumption, and reducing the rate of non-GHG emissions per liter of fuel consumed. They compared these measures with greenhouse-gas criteria: relative size of the GHG effect, market size affected, overall GHG emissions, and overall non-GHG emissions. Of the above metrics, VMT, greenhouse-gas emissions, and the number of vehicles are rel- evant to this project, while others are not directly modeled or are only tangentially related to the study (tonnage is less relevant to urban movements, and detailed monetary costs are not practical to model within the regional modeling environment). It should be noted that travel, and particularly truck travel, can be viewed as a sign of economic strength, while the metrics highlighted here point to negative impacts. As we model the impacts of land-use scenarios on freight transportation in a subsequent part of this report, the economy will be held constant to allow for an understanding of the land-use and freight-transportation interaction.

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TRB’s National Cooperative Freight Research Program (NCFRP) Report 24: Smart Growth and Urban Goods Movement identifies the interrelationships between goods movement and smart growth applications, in particular, the relationship between the transportation of goods in the urban environment and land-use patterns.

The report is designed to help promote a better understanding of urban goods movement demand, relevant performance metrics, and the limitations of current modeling frameworks for addressing smart growth and urban goods movement.

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