Improving the Sustainability of Road Freight Transport by Relaxing Truck Size and Weight Restrictions

Abstract

Increasing legal limits on the size and weight of trucks allows companies to achieve a higher degree of load consolidation. This reduces the total number of vehicle-kilometres required to distribute a given quantity of goods, saving money and reducing environmental impacts. Proposals to legalise longer and heavier vehicles, (LHVs) have, nevertheless, generated intense debate, particularly in Europe where they are strongly resisted by railway and environmental organisations. This chapter reviews recent studies on this subject, presents an analytical framework and focuses on three critical issues: the extent to which loads can be consolidated in LHVs, their effect on the freight modal split and the possibility that the resulting reduction in road freight costs will stimulate additional traffic growth. Most of the recent studies support the development of LHVs, particularly those based on actual experience of their use in countries such as Australia, Sweden and the United States.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.