A survey on urban goods movement for policy making support[Une méthode d'enquête du transport de marchandises en ville pour un diagnostic en politiques urbaines]

This paper presents an innovating survey method as regards Urban Goods Transport. Innovating, because it integrates the complexity of the urban logistics and marks a rupture with the classical methods such as origin/ destination survey method, the goods counting or sending follow-up which did not take in account the complex ways carried out to deliver goods in the city. The movement, defined as a reception, a collection of goods or both, carried out by a vehicle in an establishment, was selected as being the most relevant statistical unit. Three surveys fit into together are carried out in parallel: the first "face to face" survey by the establishments generating flows, in order to collect information on the totality of the movements carried out in one week, the second by the deliverymen who receives a questionnaire, in the surveyed establishment, and describe their trip and the third by the carriers, face to face, in order to understand their logistic organization. The investigation was carried out in three towns of different size and characteristics. 4500 establishments and 2200 deliverymen were surveyed. This survey made it possible to highlight constant functional links between the activity of the establishment and the number of movements carried out, the type of product loaded and the modes of organisation and management of the deliveries. It made it possible to build a model for decision-making support, FRETURB, which helps the decision makers to determine the vehicle flows for urban freight distribution and to make a diagnosis of the urban goods transport without having to carry out heavy and expensive investigations.