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Freight in urban mobility master plans (summary)

The Plans de déplacements urbains (PDU), or urban transport and mobility master plans, have been proposed to French local governments since the 1982 Transport Act called the "LOTI" (Loi d’orientation des transports intérieurs or Domestic Transport Orientation Act). The 1996 French Clean Air Act (LAURE) and the 2000 Law on Solidarity and Urban renewal (loi SRU) included to the LOTI an article reforming PDUs. It intends to make PDUs more effective and it obliges PDUs to include freight issues. PDUs are now made compulsory for metropolitan areas over 100 000 inhabitants. 72 French urban areas are affected by the measure.

Other rules have contributed to make a PDU more effective in terms of rational metropolitan planning process. A PDU’s territory cannot be inferior to the "Urban Transport Perimeter", which is the metropolitan transport agency’s jurisdiction covered by public transport services. Also, a PDU has to include tangible planning and operational measures to guarantee its enforceability, and it has to be reviewed every five years.

Perhaps the most significant reform introduced by the LAURE and the loi SRU comes from a provision making it compulsory for local police regulations to be "compatible" or "made compatible" with the orientations of the PDU. For the first time, a legal limit is put on local municipal ordinances with regards to metropolitan master plans.

Freight in the PDU process
Freight is considered one of the major issues at stake in a PDU process. "The Plan de déplacements urbains defines the principles of passenger and freight transport, of traffic and parking regulations in the urban transport perimeter". Only implicit in the former statute, freight is now explicitly part of the wording of the national regulation on PDUs. Seven major policies have to be specified by each PDU : reduction in automobile traffic and the development of clean transport modes ; (...)
 
The current contents of PDUs regarding freight transport.
Today (June 2004 survey), more than 56 PDUs have been completed. As regards freight, the situation is somewhat heterogeneous. All the PDU documents include one or various chapters on urban freight. This shows a general interest for the issue : this was not true only a few years ago, and it can be attributed directly to the new PDU process. But one can note : a lack of data regarding urban goods and commercial vehicles’ movement and the absence of specific modelling systems ; the (...)
 
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