State of the art and practice of urban freight management Part I: Infrastructure, vehicle-related, and traffic operations

The first in a series of two, this paper conducts a review of the public-sector initiatives that could be used to improve freight activity in metropolitan areas; collects data about initiatives that have been implemented and their performance; and produces a ranking of suggested initiatives. The review of public-sector initiatives is based on a comprehensive analysis of their performance, which cataloged the initiatives into seven major groups, 15 subgroups, and 48 unique initiatives. The initiatives covered in this paper include: Infrastructure Management; Parking/Loading Areas Management; Vehicle-Related Strategies; and Traffic Management. The characterization of the state of the practice and the performance of the initiatives was based on a survey that collected data from 32 countries and 56 cities throughout the world. The third component of the work is a ranking of suggested initiatives based on the performance data collected by the survey. The paper ends with a discussion of chief findings.