Urban Transport in the OIC Megacities
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Integration of NMTwith urban design and other modes is considered essential for the success of urban
transport strategies. The ability to take seamless and efficient trips in the urban environment is
heavily dependent on NMT and particularly on walking as most trips involve at lease a short leg
carried out on foot. In addition, similar to policies aimed at promoting public transport, those
promoting NMT should focus on showing that NMT is for all citizens, regardless of their economic
status. Because of the nature and the scale of non-motorized trips, the involvement of civil society in
promoting NMT and reclaiming the road space from cars is considered to be a critical success factor.
User and stakeholder participation can improve decisions by exploiting local knowledge and desires,
and spotting and solving potential problems, as well as by smoothing the execution of public sector
interventions, especially when accessibility and safety problems are urgent (World Bank, 2002).
3.5. Freight and Servicing
3.5.1. Introduction
Today’s megacities have traditionally been centres of trade and continue to concentrate a great
amount of trade activity, both national and international. Both in developed and the developing world,
megacities are regional, national and international multimodal trade hubs. As cities grow, their
economic activities and consumption patterns typically become larger, more intense and more
complex. As one outcome of the urban development process, more goods need to be delivered into
cities to satisfy consumption needs of growing urban populations. Megacities have made some
successful efforts to decouple economic growth from passenger transport but they seem to lag behind
in the goods transport sector. At the same time, even though urban freight vehicles make up a small
share of all vehicle traffic, they generate a disproportionate share of several externalities, such as
congestion on local streets and highways, infrastructure damage, pollution, greenhouse gases, and
noise (Blanco, 2014).
3.5.2. Freight and servicing of megacities in developed countries
Based on data from developed urban areas, a city generates about 300 to 400 truck trips per 1000
people per day, and each person consumes about 30 to 50 tons of goods every year. This translates
into increased freight activity and increased use of road space and infrastructure. Urban freight takes
up 10-35 percent of the total distance travelled on city streets and 3-5 percent of urban land.
Sustainable urban planning poses limitations to traditional urban freight operations, which means
that there is a need for significant changes in the urban logistics sector (Blanco, 2014).
First, the densification of urban centres, focus on public transport and the reduction of road and
parking areas is in conflict with the traditional approach to urban freight that it makes economic sense
to consolidate goods and multiple operations and goods in one large area and make deliveries with
large capacity vehicles. As urban density increases and road networks are constrained, logistics
facilities decentralize. Urban logistics centres move further away from the cores of the cities. In Paris,
parcel and express transport companies, on average, located their terminals 6.8 miles farther away
from their geographic centroid in 2010 than in 1975, while businesses and shops have only moved 1.8
miles away during the same period while consumers and products continue to live inside the urban
areas (Blanco, 2014).
Second, it is extremely difficult to find uniform regulatory solutions for urban freight as there is a huge
diversity in the urban freight needs from one economic sector to another and across urban areas. Such
diversity also poses difficulties to identifying common technologies or transferring knowledge
between metropolitan areas. Combined with a fragmentation of the actors often involved in policy
making in cities and metropolitan areas, such as planning agencies, port operators or transit
authorities, decision making crosses multiple jurisdictional barriers. Finally, the urban freight sector
is only the last (or first) mile of a much larger supply chain that expands beyond the borders of the
urban area, into regional, national and global economies. This larger geographical span makes supply