Chapter 13: Accessibility and Freight: Transportation and Land Use—Exploring Spatial-Temporal Dimensions

Considering transportation’s influence on urban development patterns, the central question concerns how accessibility influences land use development and the decisions made by locators (firms or individuals). As an integral part of the interrelationship between transportation (T) and land use (LU), accessibility is an obvious focus of much research. However, there are still important questions about its characteristics and influence. This is particularly true if we think beyond people movement and personal activities to the movement of goods (freight) and land use classes associated with goods distribution activity or Distribution-Logistics-Warehousing (DLW) (Woudsma, 2001). The central aim of this paper is to explore T/LU relationships and accessibility from a freight perspective. DLW falls within the context of logistics and supply chain management, a recent evolution of the goods production-distribution process. The importance of understanding the urban T/LU problem within the context of these dimensions is increasing with the growing recognition that the DLW sector has a strong influence on regional prosperity and is a powerful factor affecting regional structural change and urban land use (Hesse, 2002). Canadian statistics reveal that “more than 90% of the goods moved within Canada depend on truck transportation, either solely or as part of an intermodal shipment” (Industry Canada, 2000). Trucks carry nearly all of the commodities from warehouses—or the more appropriately termed distribution centres - to points of consumption of retail sale in metropolitan regions (Wegmann et al., 1995). In Calgary, Alberta, transportation and warehousing grew 20% between 1990 and 2001 making it one of the top two fastest growing economic sectors (The City of Calgary, 2002a; The City of Calgary, 2002c).