Telematics,UrbanFreightLogisticsandLowCarbonRoad.docx

Telematics, Urban Freight Logistics and Low Carbon Road Networks1Dr Guy Walker 2Alastair Manson1Centre for Sustainable Road Freight2Institute for Infrastructure and EnvironmentHeriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, EH14 4ASABSTRACTIt is widely assumed telematics will play a major part in helping make the road freight sector more sustainable. Telematics works at the interface of road vehicles and the road network, helping to ensure the former make the most efficient and rational use of the latter. The exact nature of this interaction is the topic of this paper. Four archetypal street patterns were modelled using traffic microsimulation, populated with vehicles possessing various levels of telematics, and run multiple times to reveal outcomes in terms of journey length, duration, cost and carbon emissions. The findings show that the topology of urban street patterns interacts strongly with the level of telematics and the route guidance it provides.In some network types the amount of route guidance provided led to consistent improvements in network and vehicle performance, whilst in other networks the same performance could be achieved with 100% telematics as it could with 0%. A fundamental relationship is revealed between the universal network coefficient Beta (β) and the overall level of telematics required to optimise performance across all variables. The implications for telematics strategies are profound: it seems that every driver does not need to know everything in order to bring about optimal network performance.Keywords:street patterns, telematics, network metrics, carbon emissionsIntroductionTelematicsEighty percent of the UK population now lives in an urban area. This drives increasing urban freight movements which, in turn, interact with dense street networks and a strong planning incentive to maximise their capacity and reduce vehicle emissions (Hesse Rodrigue, 2004). Telematics, in the form of route guidance, is a key enabler for this. There is goo