A location-based accessibility analysis to estimate the suitability of urban consolidation facilities

This paper proposes a location-based accessibility analysis framework to assess the suitability of urban consolidation platform location scenarios. First, an overview of urban consolidation is presented to identify the main types of platforms and the related scientific work. Then, the proposed framework is presented on the form of a three-step procedure. The first step is to generate goods transport demand using a delivery-to-commodity model. The second consists in estimating routes both for serving the consolidation platforms supplied by shippers and for delivering customers afterwards, using a VRP algorithm. The third step consists in performing an accessibility calculation. Starting from the distances travelled obtained by the vehicle routing algorithm, travel times (including vehicle running and stopping times) are estimated, after which a location-based accessibility indicator based on transport cost is obtained. To illustrate the framework proposed, an example of application for the city of Lyon (France) is presented. Therefore, three sets of scenarios are assessed and discussed. Finally, practical issues of the proposed method are presented.