Underground freight transport systems as city logistics measures

Eiichi Taniguchi, Department of Civil Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan

This paper presents concepts of underground freight transport systems as city logistics measures. As well overview and review of the development of underground freight transport systems in Japan will be addressed.

The underground freight transport systems play a very important role towards city logistics, since the systems can provide efficient and environment friendly logistics systems. However, they have not been deployed in actual cities mainly because of the financial and organisational problems.

We need to consider the following point: (a) how we can combine the new systems with the existing systems, (b) how we can facilitate freight systems in automated highway systems including passenger cars, (c) how we can overcome the huge initial investment for the new systems and (d) how we can think of the new systems in conjunction with e-logistics. This paper will try to discuss these issues on underground freight transport systems as city logistics measures.

“City logistics is the process for totally optimising the logistics and transport activities by private companies with the support of advanced information systems in urban areas considering the traffic environment, its congestion, safety and energy savings within the framework of a market economy” (Taniguchi et al, 2001) We need innovative and efficient freight transport systems to achieve city logistics by solving difficult problems including the congestion, environment and safety issues. Underground freight transport systems should be a good answer to cope with these challenging problems. Therefore, it is significant to re-think the underground freight transport systems in light of recent advances in research on city logistics and urban freight transport.

REFERENCE

Taniguchi, E., R. G. Thompson, T. Yamada, R. van Duin, City Logistics --- Network modelling and intelligent transport system, Pergamon, Oxford, 2001.