Validating Urban Freight Deliveries Through Traffic Microsimulation: An Experimental Study

Abstract

Traffic microsimulation tools have been extensively used in evaluating urban freight transport systems. Aim of this paper is to develop a city wide urban traffic model that integrates the daily freight trips of a private courier company on the basis of a typical day. To achieve this, the traffic model is calibrated and validated based on travel time data from Volos’ taxis GPS devices. The validated traffic model is then enriched by freight vehicles’ routes in form of public transport lines so as to integrate the rest vehicular traffic with the considered freight traffic. Freight data were given by “ELTA Courier” company which provides door-to-door deliveries in the city of Volos, Greece. The produced model simulated the freight trips of six freight vehicles, four motorbikes and two minivans, performing 199 delivery stops in the examined typical day, during 09:00–20:00. The development of the urban freight traffic model is demonstrated through the case study of Volos, providing useful insights. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.