A model for simulating urban goods transport and logistics: the integrated choice of ho.re.ca. activity decision-making and final business consumers

This paper proposes the advancements of a general model developed by the authors in multi-year research in order to simulate the urban freight transport and logistics. The advancements mainly concern: the modeling framework and calibration. In fact, the previous studies mainly investigated the pull movements of retailers and end consumers, while now both push and pull movements of goods are analyzed and modeled. The proposed analysis refers to choices made by ho.re.ca. (hotel, restaurant, catering) activity decision-making (manager, chief) and final business consumers. Although they are end consumers due to final freight destination or their freight consumption, they have a decisional choice process that can be assumed similar to retailer’s one. The new calibration advancements were made on the basis of surveys carried out in the inner zone of Rome where more than 500 truck-drivers were interviewed. Models were specified in order to test new model forms (e.g. nested logit) respect the currently consolidated and commonly used.