Delivery vehicles in shopping centres designed for pedestrians only may give cause to safety problems and affect the attractiveness of the shopping area. In order to defy such problems, local authorities tend to only allow freight traffic into such areas during a certain period of the day. This has quite a number of consequences for transporters, who find themselves restricted in their possibilities to plan optimal routings and as a result are often faced with additional costs. In this publication both sides of the coin are discussed in detail and worked out into a checklist, which can be used in (local) policies in order to come to a balanced consideration of interests. In theory, it hardly seems possible to reconcile the interests of shopowners and consumers with those of transporters. However, concerted action and especially regional cooperation may lead to compromises that are acceptable to all parties involved.
Abstract