Urban freight transport demand: transferability of survey results analysis and models

The present research addresses the issue of data collection, models and methods for urban freight transport demand investigation and the difficulties related to costs and the fact that few data are often available. Then, it becomes important to investigate the transferability of results in order to improve their use and to assess whether the obtained results is dependent on any particular condition, and whether the lessons learnt in one city can be transferred to other cities. The transfer of a previously estimated model to a new application context can reduce or eliminate the need for a large data collection and model development effort in the application context. Therefore, the main goal of the research is to compare the freight transport demand in two European cities (Rome and Santander) in order to highlight which similarities and differences depend on some factors and demonstrates that there are many different patterns of urban distribution that need to be taken into account. The analysis is based on some similar surveys carried out in the cities that are also very different in terms of spatial and economic patterns. Furthermore, the available surveys in Rome and Santander have been the basis for the calibration also in Santander of a modelling system for urban freight demand forecast set up in Rome. In such a way, the analysis of model and parameter transferability is also investigated.