SISTEMA DE GESTIÓN DE LA INFORMACIÓN MUNICIPAL - SIM

Stakeholders are any group of people, organised or not organised, who share an interest or stake in a particular issue or system (Macharis, Turcksin & Lebeau, 2012). The body of literature on urban freight transport and urban distribution leads us to distinguish five main stakeholders for urban freight distribution: Senders, Receivers, LSPs,

(local) Authorities and Citizens. One of the first comprehensive analyses of urban goods movements was conducted by Ogden (1992). He identified three main stakeholders with an active role in urban freight transport: receivers, carriers and forwarders. Other authors addressing the topic of urban freight stakeholders also distinguish among these three stakeholders, although some of them do not consider forwarders/senders and receivers to be separate stakeholders (Taylor, 2005; Witlox, 2006; Quak, 2008; Behrends; 2011). The importance of involving policy makers, decision-makers and local authorities has been recognised in more recent research (Taylor, 2005; Munuzuri, Larraneta, Onieva & Cortes, 2005; Witlox, 2006; Quak, 2008; Behrends, 2011; Russo & Comi, 2011; Lindholm, 2012; Stathopoulos, Valeri & Marcucci, 2011; Ballantyne, Lindholm & Whiteing, 2013; Lindholm & Browne, 2013; Ystmark et al., 2014). Some authors suggest considering ‘society’ or ‘citizens’ as a fifth stakeholder (Taylor, 2005; Witlox, 2006; Quak, 2008). Ballantyne et al. (2013) argued that citizens and visitors have an interest in the system of urban freight transport but do not have a direct influence on the system. From that perspective, the authors differentiated between actors and stakeholders and also considered public transport operators, trade associations, commercial organisations and land owners/property owners as passive stakeholders.

The theoretical research on urban off-hour deliveries does not confirm that we should consider the same five stakeholders for urban off-hour deliveries, which is considered a specific type of urban freight distribution. Holguín- Veras et al., (2005) were the first to describe the interactions taking place among the different actors in the case of off-hour deliveries. The authors acknowledged that there are both private and public sector actors, but they focused on private sector stakeholders: shippers, warehouses, receivers, third-party logistics providers (3PLs) and trucking companies. The European research project Niches also approached off-hour deliveries from a stakeholder perspective (www.niches-transport.org). For them, the three key stakeholders are: the city administration, transport operators and shop owners. Although these two references did not consider new stakeholders that do not fit our categories, more insight into which stakeholders are affected by a shift to more off-hour deliveries is necessary to measure the support for such a shift.

Multiple trials and pilots programs have attempted to demonstrate that it is possible to shift deliveries to off-hours. For many of these trials, the before situation was compared with the pilot situation with respect to various quantitative and qualitative indicators. The indicators for which a positive or negative impact was measured can provide us with insight into which stakeholders are affected by a shift to more off-hour urban deliveries.

We reviewed the impact assessments and evaluations of 33 off-hour delivery trials that took place in Europe and North America between 1966 and 2014. In a first stage, these impact assessments and evaluations were retrieved through a systematic keyword search in Web of Science and Google Scholar. The keywords that were used are: ‘city logistics night deliveries’, ‘urban distribution night deliveries’, ‘off-hour deliveries’, ‘night-time deliveries’ and ‘silent deliveries’. Because of the low output, we also performed the same keyword search in Google. After scanning the output for new references, trials and pilot programs, we ended up with 38 references evaluating 33 off-hour delivery trials. It is important to note that these references are mostly reports, papers or even websites or leaflets discussing some aspects of the trial. It is possible that not all of the impacts that were measured were also published. In addition, many of these trials were small scale and short term. Nevertheless, this sample of evaluations and impact assessments is large enough to determine a trend or pattern. The list of trials and references can be found in Annexes A and B. In total, the 38 references mention 65 different impact indicators that were measured for at least one trial. Some indicators use different measuring units. Impact on fuel consumption, for example, is expressed in percentage terms or in litres per year, per 100 kilometres or per trip. On average, an indicator is measured for 3.60 trials and has an even lower median value of 2. The five most commonly measured indicators are: noise nuisance (complaints by local residents) (24), noise nuisance (noise measurements) (23), driving time (14), fuel consumption (trip) (10) and loading/unloading time (8). These five indicators are then followed by 7 other indicators that were measured for 6 different trials. Table 10 provides an overview. Based on the descriptions of the indicators in the references, we aimed to link each indicator to one or more stakeholders whom it affects. First, it appeared that every indicator that is relevant for one of the other stakeholders could also be relevant for the (local) authorities. Whether it actually is relevant to the authorities depends on the choices the authorities made when deciding on their policy. Furthermore, each government agency also has several policy areas that might attach more or less value to a particular indicator. Second, the stakeholder ‘citizens’ is a very broad category. Local residents, customers, road users, commuters, and employees are all affected by a shift to more off-hour deliveries, but in different ways. The question then becomes whether the stakeholder ‘citizens’ should be further subdivided. Third, all of the indicators could be linked to one of

the five stakeholder categories that we defined earlier. However, none of the indicators was specifically defined to address one of the additional stakeholder categories defined by Ballantyne et al. (2013). This lack of specific definition does not mean, however, that off-hour deliveries do not affect these stakeholders. The impact on congestion, for example, is relevant for public transport operators.

Matching the indicators with one or more stakeholders reveals that the five stakeholders are relevant for off-hour urban deliveries. Other than the category ‘local authorities’, most of the indicators could be linked to the stakeholder ‘citizens’ (30 indicators, or 46.15%). The fewest indicators could be linked to ‘senders’ (8 indicators, or 12.31%). For this particular pilot program, the five stakeholders could be narrowed down to three because the retailer acts as sender, receiver and LSP at the same time when delivering to shops from their distribution centres in the vicinity of Brussels.

Table 10. Impact indicators from a review of the impact assessments and evaluations of 33 off-hour delivery trials linked to urban distribution stakeholders

Source: Own setup.