Recurring Patterns of Commercial Vehicles Movements in Urban Areas: The Parma Case Study

Urban freight transport is capable of generating “temporal-related utility” in the urban economy by providing the goods required by the end-consumers at the right time in the right place. This paper focuses on the time sensitivity of one-to-many distribution processes in urban environment. An in-depth 8-month survey of commercial vehicle tours leaving from an urban distribution centre, located in the outskirt of the city of Parma (Italy), has been performed, merging information between a GPS-based dataset and a wider operations dataset. Through continuous approximation models, the relative impact of time- dependent parameters of the delivery process, particularly drivers’ working time and favourite time slots for deliveries, has been analysed along with the effects due to traffic congestion.