In urban areas underground logistic systems - designed as delivery service to provide shops, industrial sites and office locations - may help to relieve pressure on the road network in particular in older inner cities which have to deal with increasing traffic congestion. When shops are provided by an underground logistic system unloading trucks will not disturb shoppers in shopping streets or traffic flows in streets where cars are allowed. Recently, a number of pilot studies on the feasibility of these systems are conducted in the Netherlands. The emphasis is on technical, conceptual, strategic, legal and economic feasibility. So far, no studies are applied to the impact of the systems mentioned on the spatial structure of cities. In this paper, two topics are addressed. Firstly, the authors discuss hypothetically the impacts of such a system on the spatial location of economic activities, in particular shopping centres, in urban areas. Secondly, they discuss using a number of case studies the spatial search process to find the optimal spot to locate logistic city parks. These are sites, located near the urban built environment, where goods will be transferred from traditional surface transport modes such as truck, train and barge, to the logistic underground system to be transported into the city. (A)
Abstract