On 27 July 2020, the Government published “Gear Change – a bold vision for cycling and walking” [21] setting out the Government’s plans to promote cycling and walking in England. Key aims for this strategy include improvements in reducing congestion in town centres, increasing local business, reducing transport’s environmental impact, improving air quality, and reducing noise.
One of the commitments made in Gear Change is to pilot the use of compulsory urban consolidation centres (CUCCs) in historic city centres, specifically, it said:
“In one or two small historic city centres with narrow and crowded streets, we will pilot compulsory freight consolidation schemes, based on experience from the Continent, which seeks to ensure that all deliveries (except perishables and items which require specialist carriers) are made to consolidation centres on the edge of the city centre or the edge of the city, then taken to their final destinations in a far smaller number of vehicles, including cargo bikes and electric vans wherever possible. These pilots could complement work already underway by cities and towns to develop Clean Air Zones to improve air quality.”
The definition of an Urban Consolidation Centre (UCC) has varied and developed over time with multiple confusions between ‘urban distribution centres’ and ‘urban freight transhipment platforms’ and so on [47,48]. Since many such definitions are for centres that are not explicitly for the consolidation of goods, they need excluding and as such the following definition meets our needs most appropriately:
"A centre for transhipment of goods with a destination in the city, located at the edge of the city with good infrastructural accessibility. Its main purpose is to achieve a high degree of collection in the goods flows (thick) to supply efficient transport from the distribution centre to the city centre and vice versa" [49]
This addresses the core definition of a UCC. Another definition often used in the literature is that of Browne, et al [48] which adds multiple additional features and can be adopted.
“[A] UCC is best described as a logistics facility that is situated in relatively proximity to the geographic area that it serves be that a city centre, an entire town, or a specific site (e.g., shopping centre), from which consolidated deliveries are carried out within that area. A range of other value-added logistics and retail services can also be provided at the UCC. Logistics companies with deliveries scheduled for the urban area or site can transfer their loads at the UCC and thereby avoid entering the congested area. The UCC operator sorts and consolidates the loads from several logistics companies and delivers them, often on environmentally friendly vehicles, to an agreed delivery pattern” (Browne et al., 2005).
Delivery route with the usage of the UCC.
Figure 2: Conceptualisation of a UCC, Verlinde et al., [50]