A proactive public sector: How can local authorities make the most of freight?

This month, Associate Fiona Jenkins took part in the panel ‘Packaging up the environment: Can logistics be sustainable?’ at the Future Transport Forum in Southampton. The following is based on her talk, ‘Exploring the challenges and opportunities for freight from a local authority viewpoint’.

It is an injustice that we only notice the freight system when something goes wrong and don’t appreciate it at its best.

We don’t see the freight network when it’s functioning well, quietly moving things around; we only see it when there are containers held up in the Suez Canal, gaps in supermarket shelves, or delays in our latest online purchase. 

If the freight system largely does its thing in the background, and usually does that thing well, why should it matter to planners and decision-makers in the public sector?

• Road freight poses unique challenges when it comes to transport-related carbon emissions. Only 0.7% of the UK’s heavy goods vehicle (HGV) fleet runs on clean energy, and the rate of decarbonisation for the freight sector is even slower than for the wider transport sector.
• Freight significantly contributes to congestion in some areas and along certain routes. Time lost to congestion is damaging productivity and costs the UK economy dearly every year.
• Freight negatively impacts people and communities in terms of air pollution, noise pollution, and road safety; while HGVs are slightly less likely to be involved in collisions, when they are, the outcomes are more serious.
• Freight is a major employer in its own right. In some areas of the Midlands, the freight and logistics sector is a primary employer, with many of the jobs being highly-skilled. 

At a moment when the pathway to Net Zero, air quality, and all-important economic growth are high on the agenda, it’s time for local authorities to get serious about freight. 

The challenges of freight for local authorities

Freight can pose a problem for transport planners who use data as the foundation stone of good decision-making, but find that data on goods is less readily available compared to passengers. 

This means that we have a partial picture of what is being moved, when, and why, and without that knowledge, it’s hard to understand the demand management aspect of freight; what proportion of trips could be switched to a different mode, re-timed to avoid peak times on the network, or even avoided altogether. 

However, our pursuit of the perfect freight dataset may sometimes get in the way of making do with the ‘good enough’ data that we already have. Rather than getting hung up on innovative data-gathering, time could be better spent using old-fashioned methods like going door-to-door on the high street to understand the delivery and servicing requirements, or spending a day, week, or month observing kerbside use. 

Another factor that can hinder good planning for freight is ‘freight blindness’, when the public sector has a limited understanding of how and why to plan for freight, and so doesn’t make ‘freight aware’ decisions. 

In this area, having conversations does help. The public sector and the freight sector can be brought together through freight forums, partnerships, or freight councils to work on shared challenges and priorities. At Steer, we are currently on a project with Transport for the South East, Transport East, and England’s Economic Heartland to understand what a training programme for improving ‘freight awareness’ should look like.

Focus on what is possible today 

The most important thing to remember for local authority decision-makers when dealing with freight is to play to their strengths and make the best use of their existing powers and tools. 

Local Transport Plans (LTPs) are the perfect opportunity to outline specific schemes to manage and enable freight. More often, they’re an opportunity to think about the role of travel demand management in freeing up street space and kerbside for essential delivery and servicing trips. 

A Local Plan is the way in which the freight sector can be allocated the space it needs to run efficient distribution operations, and it’s also the way in which freight infrastructure like railheads or wharves can be protected. 

Through development management, there’s the opportunity to implement controls on how new developments are built, receive deliveries, and are serviced. For example, authorities can require construction material to be brought in by rail or by water where possible, deliveries to be made outside of peak hours, or mandate some form of consolidation.  

The public sector can and should make the first move in seeking to improve understanding of the freight sector. There are several different models of how the two sectors can be brought together, but what’s important is that the conversation starts and that there’s momentum brought to tackling shared challenges. 

Local authorities can leverage their buying power on contracts by specifying that vehicles used in the delivery of council services, like those for refuse collection, meet certain safety standards or are electric. 

And finally, local authorities can be influencers. With their own fleets, or through their supply chains, they can demonstrate their confidence in new technologies or fuels, and so encourage and support local businesses in making a positive change. 

While freight poses many challenges to the public sector, it is also an essential lever in several key policy areas. Steer is ready to help any local authority that wants to start taking action on enabling clean and efficient freight.