Enabling sustainable development of urban freight from a local authority perspective

Doctoral thesis, 2012

On the path towards sustainability for the urban area, local authorities make decisions that affect freight transport. However, local authorities might not always be aware of the effect their decisions and policy making have on freight transport and its stakeholders. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to the enabling for local authorities to include freight in urban transport planning for sustainable development. In order to get urban freight on the overall transport planning agenda for the local authorities, there is a need to understand urban freight transport of today and what sustainable urban freight transport is. The complexity could be illustrated through a description of the stakeholders, the key mechanisms as the outcomes of their interaction as well as the drivers and barriers to sustainable urban freight transport. In this thesis seven qualitative studies have been performed, based on case studies of cities in northern Europe, in order to get a comprehensive picture of the situation as well as how to handle it. The conclusion of this thesis is that in order for local authorities to include freight transport in the overall transport planning, there is a need for resources and information. There are several possibilities, where freight partnerships, information exchange and increased capacity in personnel at local authorities are some, but it is necessary to include relevant stakeholders in the process. To work with freight transport, a thorough transport planning process is essential, whereby urban prerequisites and stakeholder requirements are taken into consideration. Contributions from this thesis consist of four main areas: the development of a framework identifying and separating actors and stakeholders; the enhancement of mechanisms that influence the urban freight transport situation; the development of an assessment framework for the involvement of stakeholders through urban freight partnerships as a step towards the inclusion of freight transport in the overall transport planning; and, finally, the development of a transport planning process model in order to help local authorities to work with freight transport, highlighting the importance of defining the problem and taking into consideration the urban context and stakeholder requirements, evaluation and good dissemination.