Freight delivery services in urban areas: Monitoring accessibility from vehicle traces and road network modelling

Abstract Local Authorities plays a fundamental role in the management of city mobility and in accounting for the needs of different stakeholders involved in the urban freight transport. The aim of this study is to develop a method that could support the evaluation of the city accessibility for freight distribution services. As Local Authorities can use floating vehicle data (FVD), which are a current trend in mobility management, gaining new knowledge from data could be crucial to help the various stakeholders to better address their needs. Accessibility in urban areas is investigated through travel time estimations along the most frequently used routes connecting relevant nodes of the city and their average speed using a simplified road network model. After the description of the principal elements of the method, a test case is also presented for the urban area of Turin, Italy, to demonstrate the applicability of the procedures on a real scenario and dataset. The results confirm, also through the use of skim matrices, the value of FVD in assessing the accessibility of different zones interested in delivery operations, which may change over time, providing monitoring functions to urban logistics operators and Local Authorities in managing urban freight flows.