Analysis of the environmental impacts of unloading bays based on cellular automata simulation

Abstract Urban freight transport contributes to a number of environmental problems, such as poor air quality, noise and greenhouse gas emissions. Analysing the impact of UFT measures is particularly important, since improving the situation for freight deliveries more often than not will be at the expense of the citizens. Unloading bays are one of the most popular and simple solutions to implement to support the development of a sustainable urban freight transport system. This measure is aimed at reducing the congestion in busy city streets, which is often caused by delivery vehicles parking directly on traffic lanes to perform their (un)loading operations. The analysis, presented in this paper, is aimed at emphasising the advantages of unloading bays for the public, and thus enhancing the arguments in favour of popularisation of unloading bays. We simulate the traffic in areas of Szczecin and Oslo, and compare the situation without unloading bays to the situation with unloading bays. This is used to predict the benefits of unloading bays in terms of traffic flow and emissions. The basis of the analysis is utilization of a scenario-based approach and cellular automata simulation.