4 Chapter Four – Review of Decision Making Frameworks
6.3 Highlights from the pre-interview questionnaires
As explained in Chapter Five - section 5.4, each stakeholder was asked to complete a pre-interview questionnaire prior to their interview taking place, which would help to use the time spent in the interview more effectively. Two variants of questionnaire were designed, one for the local authority respondents, and another for the freight transport industry respondents (a copy of these questionnaires can be found in Appendix II & III). The purpose of the questionnaires distributed to local authority representatives was two-fold. Firstly it enabled a basic profile of each interviewee’s transport planning background to be compiled in order to ascertain to some degree their level of
experience; alongside collecting general information about the local authority, and the transport demand management (TDM) measures and polices currently operating within each local authority’s road network, in order to satisfy the second research aim (see Chapter One, section 1.3.1). Secondly the questionnaires helped to prepare each
respondent for their forthcoming interview by allowing them to become familiar with the topics likely to arise in the interview.
The pre-interview questionnaire for the freight transport industry was shorter and used to collect general information about the company’s vehicle fleet, the types of business it engages in, the types of urban area they operate in and the frequency of trips to urban areas. This enabled a better understanding of the context of responses from the industry representatives. The highlights of these questionnaires are summarised in the following paragraphs.
6.3.1 Profile of local authority interview participants
The position or role of the individuals representing local authorities’ included: Transport and Senior Transport Planners; Transport Policy Officers and Managers; Principal Transportation Engineers; Head of Transportation Strategy; and Head of Transport Policy. Their experience of working in a local authority transport planning department ranged from just one year to twenty years at the time of the interview, with the majority having had between five and ten years experience. Only one local authority respondent was employed in a specifically freight orientated role, two had someone working on a freight oriented role underneath them, whilst the remaining nine had little direct involvement with freight related issues in their current role.
6.3.2 Summary of findings - local authority questionnaire
The local authority pre-interview questionnaire revealed that ‘maximizing overall economic competitiveness and productivity’ was the most prioritised policy objective. This is perhaps unsurprising given the economic downturn which characterized the period of data collection. The majority of respondents felt they ‘understood somewhat’ the freight flows in their local area, however over half of those responded believe their local policies are ‘neither effective nor ineffective’ at supporting freight, which supports Ogden’s (1984, p253) premise that urban freight “is rarely the subject of urban
transport planning and policy deliberations”.
The most commonly occurring Transport Demand Management (TDM) measures and policies in the local authorities interviewed are traffic calming measures (particularly in the inner and outer urban areas, but also appearing in the Central Business District (CBD) in some locations); waiting restrictions found in many CBD’s as well as other urban areas; bus lanes; loading restrictions including access time-windows; one-way systems; and vehicle height and weight restrictions. These findings support the general trend towards local authorities implementing largely restrictive policies to mitigate the negatives impacts of urban freight (Danielis et al. 2010). Ogden (1991, p481) reasons that the emphasis on restriction may have arisen from the perception amongst local
authority traffic engineers “that their role is to regulate and restrict a ‘rapacious’ private sector, rather than to assist it to provide goods and services to the community”. Therefore, it would appear that the policies and measures most commonly
implemented are largely restrictive policies to mitigate the negative impacts of freight. With regards to freight related policies, the main barriers to implementing effective freight policies were identified as including: lack of appropriate data, insufficient operator engagement, and a lack of resources and funding. Respondents were asked to rate the effectiveness, favorability and ease of implementing fourteen freight related TDM policies and measures. There were six options that local authorities responded to most positively, rating them highly on both levels of effectiveness and favorability towards their implementation. These were: urban freight routes, urban freight mapping, dedicated loading bays, repositioning of loading bays, freight specific signage and encouraging local sourcing. However, despite being rated highly for effectiveness and favorability, only freight specific signage was deemed easy to implement. With the exception of local sourcing, all of the highly rated options are ways of managing or restricting freight movements.
The final section asked local authorities questions regarding the consideration of an Urban Consolidation Centre (UCC) in their area. Of the twelve local authorities interviewed, nine reported that an UCC had been considered for their local area, with the most popular objectives for an UCC being to: reduce carbon footprint, improve urban freight distribution, improve air quality, and reduce urban congestion. However, it should be noted that the objective of reducing traffic congestion does not necessarily align with improving freight operations. The main issues cited for not establishing an UCC, were funding and user uptake, which corresponds to the findings of Browne et al. (2007b) who discuss the lessons learned from existing and attempted UCC’s.
However, as Rooijen and Quak (2009) point out many logistics operators will still prefer to supply retail stores directly, eliminating the need for an UCC, regardless of any policy restrictions in place to encourage their use.
6.3.3 Profile of industry interview participants
The industry representatives interviewed included: company directors; transport managers; and operations managers from the UK logistics and transport industry. Overall, their experience of working in the transport and logistics industry varied greatly from five years to more than thirty-five years.
6.3.4 Summary of findings - freight industry questionnaire
The second section of the questionnaire asked respondents to identify their
Table 6-2 lists the nature of the organisations interviewed and their primary industry sector in which they operate. Amongst the companies interviewed, transportation of foodstuffs was the most commonly carried product type.
Of the companies interviewed, rigid and articulated HGV’s and vehicles with a curtain- side were the most commonly used, as shown in Figure 6-1; with the number of vehicles in each company’s fleet ranged between zero and 1700.
The third section of the pre-interview questionnaire focused on the urban logistics operations of the companies interviewed. Firstly the types of location where vehicles currently operate shown in Figure 6-2, which has highlighted that the majority of
companies vehicles operate across a variety of locations from the CBD and inner urban areas to as far out as rural locations, which implies that urban policies incorporating freight logistics are only part of the picture. The second question relating to urban logistics identified that for most of the companies interviewed, vehicles make numerous visits per day into town and city centre locations (Figure 6-3).
It is important to note that the freight industry questionnaire does not include an assessment of urban transport demand management measures and policies. This is because the objective for the questionnaire, as explained in section 6.2, differed between the two main stakeholder groups, and was kept brief in an effort to avoid losing participants from a notoriously hard sector to recruit.
Figure 6-3 Frequency of visits to town and city centre’s of vehicles belonging to companies interviewed