Analyzing the impacts of logistics suburbanization on logistics service accessibility: Accessibility modeling approach for urban freight

Analysis of the accessibility impacts of logistics suburbanization is critical for logistics land-use planning prac-tices. To understand these impacts, this paper conceptualizes logistics service accessibility from two perspectives in terms of urban logistics infrastructure networks (ULINs) and logistics land use stakeholders in the network, and proposes a novel quantitative approach for their measurement. We measure the service accessibility of ULINs via solving a bi-objective binary integer program which considers the facility spatial coverage and vehicle path planning. Further, cumulative-opportunity freight accessibility models are proposed to measure the service accessibility of logistics land use stakeholders while accounting for their different logistics demands. The pro-posed method is capable of measuring the spatiotemporal impacts of logistics suburbanization on the service accessibility of ULINs and the corresponding stakeholders. We use the real data of Beijing as a testbed and our results reveal that (1) there is considerable variation in the service accessibility of ULINs and logistics firms' service accessibility with respect to different logistics facility locations and (2) choosing logistics facilities' lo-cations requires careful consideration of the differences in ULINs' service accessibility to mitigate uneven service availability on the receiving side. The paper highlights the potential for freight accessibility in urban freight planning and provides effective quantitative evaluation approaches to support better practices in logistics land use and transport planning.