Comparative study on urban freight transport sustainability initiatives: Two cases from Sweden

Abstract

A wide range of initiatives has been proposed and tested in different cities around the world with the common goal of making urban freight more sustainable. This paper studies two cases of consolidation initiatives in which the property owners play an important role together with other stakeholders. Empirical material for the cases was collected and analysed using an Actors-Resources-Activities (ARA) model within an Industrial Network Approach (INA). The study describes the main stakeholders (actors) of these two cases, their organisation and operations, resources and activities, the inter-organisational relationships. The purpose of the analysis was to understand how resource constellation and activity patterns in the cases get affected and change when new consolidation schemes are implemented. The analysis of the schemes showed that the resistance to change (referred as heaviness of the existing resources and developed interdependencies of activities) indicates the points in the network where changes are difficult to realise. The research demonstrates that property owners and policymakers could be the outside influencers that could help to overcome these factors – the heaviness of the resources and interdependencies of activities – that exist in business network of urban goods deliveries and thereby facilitate transition to more sustainable urban freight.