Simulating the effects of pedestrianisation on urban freight deliveries

Abstract

The city of Seville is currently developing a land-use reorganisation policy aimed at increasing the number of pedestrian spaces. This paper contains the microscopic simulation built to assess one of those pedestrianisation initiatives from the point of view of its effects on traffic flows and, more specifically, freight deliveries. Two different alternatives are compared with the current scenario from the point of view of traffic congestion, parking space occupation and route times. Due to the complexity of the freight delivery practices involved, the use of a standard traffic simulation package was not appropriate, and the simulations were carried out using the commercial package Arena, which enabled the representation of all that complexity with a specifically built simulation model.