Greenhouse Gas Abatement Measures — Urban Freight

This study was undertaken for the Australian Greenhouse Office and carried out by the CSIRO, Kilsby Australia, and the University of South Australia. We supported Kilsby Australia by undertaking all the Sydney Strategic Travel Model (STM) runs, requiring a multi-class assignment process and extraction of traffic flow details for passenger vehicles and each commercial vehicle class. The modelled outputs were post-processed for greenhouse gas emissions at the University of South Australia.

A significant part of the work involved translating policy measures into scenarios that could be modelled meaningfully, requiring a full understanding of the STM and its limitations. The policy instruments covered infrastructure and land use measures, vehicle movement measures, and vehicle measures.

The study showed that instruments such as general reduced congestion, better traffic management, higher load factors, real-time traffic information, a Sydney orbital road, and an orbital road combined with land use change all reduce vehicle hours travelled, trip length, and emissions — contrary to industry trends towards lower load factors and “just in time” deliveries, which are likely to increase emissions. The method was expected to be generally applicable to Australian cities and potentially elsewhere.