Urban freight transport in Bologna: Planning commercial vehicle loading/unloading zones

Many European and overseas studies have brought into focus the issues related to urban freight transport in order to find possible solutions (city logistics). Urban areas, instead of being living, commercial and resting places may have their functions jeopardized either due to the intense and short range road good’s transport and to the lacking infrastructure. Commercial vehicles are detrimental for the urban environment, polluting with gasses and noises. The “just in time” policy of no warehousing enhances this kind of transportation. This paper describes some technical solutions for the management of stop and access for the goods transport vehicles in order to allow the on-time delivery as well as to mitigate the traffic induced issues towards citizens. In particular, we focused attention on various issues concerning the areas of loading and unloading goods, proposing a method that allows to optimize their size, their number and their location.