Abstract

This paper presents a review of state-of-art efforts in urban freight transport modelling in the context of their requirements and applicability as a basis for evaluation of city's freight transport policy. Freight transport mirrors all aspects of the city's economic activity and for that reason its proper planning is of extreme importance. However, urban freight system may be considered as the most varied and fragmented element of urban transport system. To address this challenge reliable planning framework is required for analysis and implementation of any measure oriented at increase of efficiency of urban freight transport system. Thus, the main goal of this paper is to verify the main characteristics of recent urban freight models with regards to current maturity of freight planning system. The case of Gdynia has been selected because the city has adopted a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan in October 2016. The Plan includes several measures related to management of urban freight and distribution system. Available urban freight models have been verified according to 1) stakeholders involved in the model, 2) the descriptor for modelling purpose, 3) the objective of the model and 4) the solution approach implemented for achieving the objective. Urban freight measures included in the Gdynia's SUMP has been confronted with this framework to find the gaps in modelling requirements, i.e. data needs versus data already available. The results show that an extensive effort is required to achieve competence level which would allow to introduce selected mesures. One of the main problems identified within a context of urban freight modelling is mismatching of scarce available data to even basic analysis of transport processes. Without reliable picture of existing situation any progress towards freight measures evaluation and planning would be futile. However, there are first examples of change on this field. One is URBACT FreightTails project where delivery profile at selected streets in Gdynia will be developed.

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