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Examensarbete

This thesis was initiated in connection to the planning of a new sustainable city centre called Frihamnen in the city of Gothenburg and a project called Dencity that aims to study the prerequisites for including personal and goods mobility early in the city planning process. The purpose of this thesis is to “describe and forecast freight deliveries to establishments and residential units in urban areas”. To fulfil the purpose, two research questions were formulated, one that addresses which attributes of an establishment that determine the amount of goods and freight traffic it attracts and which models that can predict future freight demand. The second research question studies how the development of e-commerce can affect the freight system in urban areas. To answer the first research question a literature review was conducted to formulate hypotheses on establishment attributes affecting amount of goods and freight attracted, and data were collected through a questionnaire study and case studies in Gothenburg. The findings indicate that the attributes that determine the amount of goods, volume attracted, are the number of employees and the size of the establishment. While, the attributes that have strongest significance on freight traffic are establishment area, storage area, numbers of employees, numbers of carriers and number of suppliers. The best explanatory variable for freight attraction differs between the five classification groups; only the same significant variable is seen for two groups. Moreover, the best explanatory variable within each group was used to develop explanatory models and number of employees and establishment size were used to develop predicting models for the future demand in Frihamnen. It is concluded that the forecasting models can be used early in planning processes of new urban areas and the explanatory models to establish restrictions on establishments to reduce the freight traffic in urban areas. Furthermore, findings indicate that the data collected from the questionnaire and the case studies varies significantly, why further research could focus on understanding these differences.