Advanced freight transportation systems for congested urban areas

Urban freight transportation constitutes both an extremely important and a rather disturbing activity. Increasingly, one observes efforts to measure and control freight movements within city centers. We introduce a possible organizational and technological framework for the integrated management of urban freight transportation and identify important associated planning and operation issues and models. We then describe a formulation for one of these problems, the design of the proposed logistical structure, and discuss algorithmic and implementation issues. Our model city and challenge is Rome.