Characterising urban freight solutions for medium sized cities

The experiments on optimisation of the urban goods movements are increasing in number. Many of them relate to the traditional goods without being concerned with an activity in particular. Others on the contrary are targeted on a precise sector. All these experiments are not taking into account the total organisation of goods distribution inside the city. Such an approach is undoubtedly difficult in large agglomerations but can be much more easily considered in medium sized ones. That will not only make it possible to reduce the generation of the side effects but will especially allow economic gains for the actors. Obviously, local authorities have several available actions of regulatory measurements for implementation, but they can enlarge with other types of actions and tools in a concerted approach with the freight actors. In this article, we propose a methodology to optimise urban freight transport from a systemic point of view. It has been developed considering the experiments in progress in La Rochelle, within the European project SUCCESS of the CIVITAS programme.