Applying a Mesoscopic Transport Model to Analyse the Effects of Urban Freight Regulatory Measures on Transport Emissions—An Assessment

Abstract

Sustainable urban freight management is a growing challenge for local authorities due to social pressures and increasingly more stringent environmental protection requirements. Freight and its adverse impacts, which include emissions and noise, considerably influence the urban environment. This calls for a reliable assessment of what can be done to improve urban freight and meet stakeholders’ requirements. While changes in a transport system can be simulated using models, urban freight models are quite rare compared to the tools available for analysing private and public transport. Therefore, this article looks at ways to extend Gdynia’s existing mesoscopic transport model by adding data from delivery surveys and examines the city’s capacity for reducing CO2 emissions through the designation of dedicated delivery places. The results suggest that extending the existing model by including freight-specific data can be justified when basic regulatory measures are to be used to improve freight transport. There are, however, serious limitations when an exact representation of the urban supply chain structure is needed, an element which is required for modelling advanced measures.