Planning and managing on-street delivery bay system: a simulation-based approach

In the context of ITS, new on-street freight delivery schemes provide that transport and logistics operator can have suggestions on delivery areas to be used and to book them. Besides, they can also receive suggestions on delivery tours. Thus, time spent for such freight operations can be optimised, and the delivery costs reduced. At the other hand, from city administrator point of view, these new schemes can help the supply of loading and unloading areas to match the demand, and then to reduce the interferences with other city mobility components. The paper aims at presenting a methodology that allows to simulate the real-time management of urban loading and unloading operations (including prior booking by delivery operators) and to compute performance indicators that can be used for the ex-ante assessment in planning delivery scenarios. The results of an application to the Rome’s LTZ (Limited Traffic Zone) are hence presented. The application has been developed for testing the presented method and to point out the importance of using telematics applications for managing and controlling such operations. Significant results have been obtained according to some management and operations control rules.