Urban planning
Retail and commercial centres
The way retail or commercial centres are planned, including location of loading bays, can have a significant impact on the freight task to meet the needs of business.
Freight routes
Urban planning includes planning freight routes on local roads to and from the arterial road system to:
- optimise the size of vehicles delivering freight locally
- encourage multimodal freight delivery to freight terminals, and
- minimise the impacts of deliveries on surrounding residents.
For example, the City of Wyndham is involved in planning the freight routes to an intermodal freight terminal development, in collaboration with the Department of Transport and through its membership of the Western Transport Alliance.
In 2009, the Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) and the Victorian Freight and Logistics Council (VFLC) agreed to examine capacity in local government to manage freight in the local jurisdiction. The two organisations commissioned a consultant to document and correlate their findings. The report titled Local Government Capacity Building: Planning for Freight, is available on the VFLC website.
Planning tools to help determine optimal freight routes are available through organisations such as the ARRB Group.
Links
- Metropolitan Transport Forum (MTF)
- Western Transport Alliance
- Growth Areas Authority
- The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) study - Delivering the Goods (2003): identifies best practices in urban goods transport and recommends measures to develop sustainable goods transport systems in OECD cities.