Assessment of urban freight travel characteristics - A case study of Delhi

India spends 15-20% of its GDP on transport and logistics and Indian freight transport market is expected to grow at a CAGR of about 13% by 2020. Road freight constitutes around 63% of total freight movement and the average speed of trucks on Indian roads is about 20 km/hr covers only 250-300 km a day compared to 700-800 km in developed countries. Moreover, the total trip expenses increases about 15% due to the delays at check-posts by Transport Department and Traffic Police, toll plazas etc. The working conditions of truck drivers also deteriorate as they work for long hours, resulting in high stress and fatigue leading to accidents. The need is recognized for collaboration amongst stakeholders to identify optimal freight policies and pursue a rapid deployment of improvements. In this direction, creating better data and models are needed to enable planners to better predict freight movement and design better informed policies. In the present study, the freight transport data has been exhaustively collected to assess the urban freight characteristics of Delhi. For this purpose, the field surveys namely outer cordon traffic surveys at 10 locations and focal point survey at 20 locations within the city have been conducted. The results can make a good database to understand the freight characteristics of a city and it would be highly useful in developing freight travel demand models and also evaluate appropriate freight related transport policies for their effective implementation on the urban road network by the policy makers and concerned authorities.