Analyzing the relation between land-use/urban freight operations and the need for dedicated infrastructure/enforcement — Application to the city of Lisbon

• Low-data methodology to reveal likely clusters of higher freight parking demand.
• Proposed level of service concept to compare parking infrastructure provision.
• Observed illegal non-freight parking in freight dedicated parking spots.
• Half of clusters of commerce do not have an improved level of service.
• Street with near optimal level of service has considerable illegal parking.

Urban freight (UF) operations include deliveries, pickups and transfers of physical goods within urban areas. A significant issue in UF operations is the need for law enforcement to deter non-freight vehicles from occupying loading/unloading bays. This paper aims to evaluate the level of service (LoS) of the loading/unloading bay infrastructure (i.e., the number of establishments/bay within a walking range) and the scale of illegal parking. A zone in Lisbon was selected as a case study and was analyzed, according to the relative locations of bays and establishments, as well as the establishment size and Number of Equivalent Commercial Stores (NECS). A higher LoS was expected for zones with a potentially higher UF parking demand. A Point Density and Commercial Homogeneity analysis provided an overview of the concentration of establishments. Clusters were confirmed with Global and Local Statistics of Spatial Association. The LoS was calculated for four commerce clusters, identified as likely areas of higher demand. Main clusters did not show an improved LoS. The usage of loading/unloading bays by all vehicles was observed for 17 days in a street with near-optimal spatial distribution of bays. The observed occupation of bays by non-freight vehicles was 80% of the freight vehicle demand.