Planning for the sustainability of freight and logistics

Strategic guiding principles for regional policy

Abstract

Policy-makers face challenges managing the movement of goods while responding to increasingly urgent sustainability problems. Freight policy is fragmented over many regulatory fields, often with ambiguous or contested objectives. Empirical freight transport research can be difficult to translate directly into policy settings, and policy measures often have substantial unintended consequences, especially over long time periods. These foundational challenges can make effective policy implementation difficult.

Through a review of the literature, and drawing on diverse applied research and practice experiences, we categorise intertemporal problems in designing regional freight policy, and identify principles for informing practical policy synthesis. These principles provide a framework for decision-makers who formulate policy, and for researchers who critically evaluate it. Adoption and refinement of these principles will improve the translation of research into policy through time, recognising the inherently complex and uncertain nature of planning for the movement of goods.