Freight trips generated at retail malls in dense urban areas

The number of studies examining Freight Trip Generation (FTG) has increased over the years. However, FTG modeling studies in different urban settings have presented wide-ranging results in terms of the relationship between establishment characteristics, freight deliveries, and resultant freight vehicle trips produced and attracted. This study aims to evaluate freight trips generated around retail developments or commercial districts in dense metropolitan areas, commonplace in both emerging and developed cities, which are known to attract high footfall and represent key freight attracting nodes. Establishment-level data was collected from six multi-storey retail malls in the city-state of Singapore and used to develop an aggregated model predicting FTG for retail malls or shopping centres. Using statistical regression, we model the relationship between establishment-specific attributes and deliveries per day, and then evaluate various models that can best predict freight vehicle trips per day to retail malls. This aggregated approach converts the establishment-level freight trip attraction to a building-level freight trip generation by considering trip chaining or the possibility of a carrier delivering to multiple establishments within the building during the same visit or trip. The selected model's statistical performance is validated with observed freight vehicle arrivals at 16 retail malls. A comparison of the delivery frequency per commercial establishment across different cities is also offered. FTG for these developments is found to be sensitive to the establishment type, employment size, and whether or not the establishments present are branch outlets belonging to a larger retail chain. Contributions from this work can be applied in the evaluation of urban freight logistics initiatives targeted at these locations, and to assess the nontrivial impact that retail developments in cities have on local traffic conditions.