Understanding urban freight activity: key issues for freight planning

Using information gathered from some 30 UK surveys undertaken over the last 15 years, this paper provides planners with an understanding of road-based urban retail freight transport activity. The findings suggest that the average High Street business could expect up to 10 core goods and 7.6 service visits per week, in non-peak trading periods with 25% additional activity during the build up to Christmas. Vans (‘light goods vehicles’) were the dominant mode, responsible for 42% of delivery activity with a mean dwell time of 10 min. Where possible, load consolidation should be encouraged by methods such as Delivery and Servicing Plans and using out-of-town freight consolidation centres to bring in goods over the last mile in shared vehicles. Where this is not possible, loading bay monitoring and control, and preferred lorry routes can help manage the movement of vehicles in and out of dense urban areas. Service vehicle activity is a significant contributor to urban freight movements and often requires vehicles to be parked close to the premises being served. Centrally coordinating elements of service provision (e.g. for cleaning, equipment maintenance, recyclate collection), or providing improved, more flexible parking provision for service vehicles could be as or more beneficial in reducing overall freight impacts than focusing on core goods deliveries. In the case of the latter, ‘pay-as-you-leave’ car park charging systems could encourage short-stay service vehicles to park off-street.

Investigating the rates and impacts of near misses and related incidents among UK cyclists

The paper investigates the occurrence of non-injury incidents among cyclists in the UK, seeking to (i) generate a rate that can be compared with injury rates, (ii) analyse factors affecting incident rates, and (iii) analyse factors affecting the impact of incidents on cyclists. We collected data on non-injury cycling ‘incidents’ (near misses and other frightening and/or annoying incidents) from 1692 online diaries of cycle trip stages1 and incidents, participants having signed up in advance for a specific day. Following data cleaning and coding, a dataset was created covering 1532 diary days and 3994 records of incidents occurring within the UK. Incident rates were calculated and compared to injury risks for cyclists. Cross-tabulation and regression were used to identify factors affecting incident rates and the effect an incident has on the cyclist. Frightening or annoying non-injury incidents, unlike slight injuries, are an everyday experience for most people cycling in the UK. For regular cyclists ‘very scary’ incidents (rated as 3 on a 0–3 scale) are on average a weekly experience, with deliberate aggression experienced monthly. Per mile, non-injury incidents were more frequent for people making shorter and slower trips. People aged over 55 were at lower risk, as were those cycling at the weekend and outside the morning peak. Incidents that involved motor vehicles, especially those involving larger vehicles, were more frightening than those that did not. Near miss and other non-injury incidents are widespread in the UK and may have a substantial impact on cycling experience and uptake. Policy and research should initially target the most frightening types of incident, such as very close passes and incidents involving large vehicles. Further attention needs to be paid to the experiences of groups under-represented among cyclists, such as women making shorter trips.