Road Transport System: Facilities

6. Facilities

On this page, the last element "Facilities" is presented to you.

Facilities are the interfaces at the start and end points as well as in the supply chain. From a market point of view, the start or end point is the location of the consignor or consignee. Both market participants can be, for example, private households, public authorities or companies from all branches.

Mindmap — Road system model - Facilities von Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heike Flämig, Dorothee Schielein (CC BY-SA)

Almost every market participant has access to road infrastructure but rarely to other modes of transport. In the transport chain, the facilities are sites of logistics companies, where all market participants are logistics companies. Examples are ports, airports or cross-docking facilities. Often, these transhipment facilities are intermodally connected, meaning that one or more other modes of transport also have access to these locations. But on the pre- or on-carriage leg, road vehicles are used in most cases.

There are also pure road-bound transport chains, e.g. with cross-docking facilities, where the load units are transferred from one vehicle to another. In Germany, Hermes has had collective orderer since the early 1950s and shops since the end of the 1960s. This gave rise to the model for small and medium-sized logistics nodes or transfer points, ranging from shops and boxes to buses and containers, in order to be able to bundle the transport of goods on the last mile. In some cases, the end customers now have to collect their goods there. Therefore, delivery traffic (goods transport) becomes shopping traffic (and appears in passenger transport statistics).

The size of the vehicle may differ between the ramp for goods receipt and goods issue of these nodes.

The relation between facilities and goods is called accession.

Accession

An existing infrastructure with well-developed transport networks needs additional access points at the appropriate locations. Here we will show you three different perspectives on accessibility:

From a micro perspective, accession is the possibility of goods being handed over to the recipient. Here it is usually construction measures of the building that limit the possibilities of direct transfer of goods (e.g. via a ramp) from the road vehicle to the recipient.
The meso perspective refers to the accessibility of the location of the consignee. Consignees with many suppliers in trade or industry or, for example, on large construction sites often experience traffic jams and significant time losses on the part of the carrier.
The macro perspective is the condition of the infrastructure to access a location. The dimensions (weight and size of the permissible vehicles) play a role here, as do possible restrictions on the time or space available for certain types of vehicles. But also the density of the traffic flow on the infrastructure restricts the accessibility of a location in the macro perspective.

In Germany, a lot of logistics locations are located close to the german highway. By choosing this location, the logistics companies are easy to reach and integrate in the transport process.

Sometimes, the accessibility of the road infrastructure is restricted. This map shows, where urban access regulations exist. You can see that different regions have different types of urban access restrictions. Mainly, the access is restricted with Low Emissions Zones (green) or other Key Access Regulations (blue, especially in Italy). Low emission zones are a form of urban action against traffic-related pollution.

Map — Accessibility of road infrastructure von Prof. Dr.-Ing. Heike Flämig (CC BY-SA)

For a more comprehensive overview of applicable urban access regulations, feel free to visit this website:

Urban Access Regulations in Europe

Literature
Clausen, U.; Lenz, B. (2014): Integration logistischer Knoten und ihres spezifischen Verkehrs-aufkommens in die Nachfragemodellierung des Güterverkehrs. DFG-Projekt (Projektnummer: 179833699).

Flämig, H., Sjöstedt, L., Hertel, C. (2002): Multimodal Transport: An Integrated Element for Last-Mile-Solutions? Proceedings, part 1; International Congress on Freight Transport Automation and Multimodality: Organisational and Technological Innovations. Delft, 23 & 24 May 2002. (modification of Sjöstedt 1996)

Sadler Consultants Ltd (2020): Urban Access Regulation by Map. URL: https://urbanaccessregulations.eu/userhome/map (last access: 21.06.2021)