Investigating the impact of access-timing-sizing regulations on urban logistics

Freight regulations (e.g., vehicle timing, sizing and access restrictions) play a vital role in controlling congestion and developing effective urban logistics systems. Their importance is becoming even more relevant in modern times due to enormous growth in the number of freight vehicle movements in urban areas. In this paper, we target the problem of assessing the impact of access‐timing‐sizing regulations on goods movement in urban areas. A three‐step approach is proposed. The first step involves conducting urban network traffic simulation to generate scenario data for the freight restriction policies. VISSIM, a microscopic traffic simulation software is used to perform this step. In the second step, we apply design of experiments (DOE) to analyse the simulated traffic data for testing the effectiveness of the access‐timing‐sizing policies. In the third step, an optimisation approach using desirability function is performed to determine the exact level of regulatory policies for the city. An application of the proposed approach for City of Montreal is provided. The strength of the proposed approach is its strong practical applicability. It is also one of the few quantitative approaches available in current literature for assessing the impact of freight regulatory policies in urban areas.