Elsevier

Journal of Transport Geography

Volume 60, April 2017, Pages 110-118
Journal of Transport Geography

Spatial reorganization of urban logistics system and its impacts: Case of Tokyo

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2017.03.001Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Outward migration of logistics facilities occurred in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area.

  • Large logistics facilities in suburb replaced small facilities near the urban center.

  • Outward migration brought logistics facilities closer to their shipment demands.

  • Increase in average load offset longer trip distance, improving efficiency by 4%.

  • Effects of outward migration of logistics facilities can be negative or positive.

Abstract

We use the comprehensive freight survey data from 2003 and 2013 to analyze how the restructuring of logistics industry that occurred amid the broad trend of decentralization in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area has affected the efficiency of truck shipments. The analysis reveals that the negative effects of the outward migration of logistics facilities were offset by the increase in average shipment load and efficient spatial distribution of logistics facilities that occurred in parallel with the decentralization. As a result, the truck shipment efficiency improved by 4%.

Introduction

The spatial distribution of logistics facilities (e.g. distribution centers and warehouses) observed in large cities around the world, especially in North American and European cities, is becoming a germane topic of discussion for researchers and practitioners engaged in transport and urban planning. The advances in the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and globalization have led to the evolutions in logistics operations and supply chain management practices and also the restructuring of urban freight systems (Hesse and Rodrigue, 2004). While facilities with larger footprints are desired for modern supply chains, appropriate sites are rarely found near the urban centers where many activities are concentrated, traffic is congested, and the land value is prohibitively high. As a result, logistics sprawl, “the movement of logistics facilities away from urban centers” (Dablanc et al., 2014) has occurred in many metropolitan regions. The outward migration of logistics facilities is a concern because it may lead to an increase in vehicle-kilometer-traveled (VKT) and exacerbate negative externalities, such as traffic congestion, carbon emissions, local air pollution, infrastructure damage and traffic accidents.

In recent years, a large number of studies of logistics sprawl have been conducted in various cities around the world. In most studies, the outward migration of logistics facilities was verified. On the other hand, studies that measure traffic impacts of such outward migration have been almost nonexistent due to the fact that such study requires shipment data at a reasonable level of geographic resolution if not at the facility level. One such study is Sakai et al. (2015) that use the Tokyo Metropolitan Freight Survey (TMFS) from 2003 to examine the inefficiencies associated with the outward migration of logistics facilities observed for the Tokyo Metropolitan Area (TMA). Their analysis identifies the outward migration of logistics facilities in the TMA and also finds higher shipment inefficiencies for the logistics facilities that are located far from the urban center. However, the study is limited in that it relies on the data from a single year; especially, the changes in the spatial distribution of shipment demand cannot be measured accurately without the data from more than one time period.

In 2013, the latest urban freight establishment survey (2013 TMFS) was conducted in the TMA with a survey design similar to the 2003 version of the TMFS. In this study, we use both 2003 and 2013 TMFS to overcome the limitations of Sakai et al. (2015) and expand the analysis to reveal how the outward migration of logistics facilities influences truck shipments. We combine the TMFS data with other socio-economic data to analyze the changes in urban structure, including the distributions of shipment demand locations, and urban freight system in the TMA. As far as we know, this is the first detailed diagnosis of the dynamics of the migration of logistics facilities and its impacts on truck shipments based on the comprehensive freight survey data from two different years, and we believe this paper contributes beneficial insights for the research on the spatial distribution of logistics facilities.

The rest of the paper consists of the following contents; in Section 2, we introduce the literature on the structural changes that modern logistics practices have gone through in the past few decades, the measurements of the outward migration of logistics facilities, and the impacts of such migration; in Section 3, the data and the methodology of the analysis are discussed; in Section 4, the results of the analysis are presented and the findings are discussed; finally, Section 5 concludes the paper with a summary of the findings and their implications.

Section snippets

Literature review

In this section, we first provide a brief overview of the changes in logistics and supply chain industries that took place over the last two to three decades and associated impacts. The discussion is intentionally brief since there are many references on the topic including the ones mentioned here. We then provide a more detailed review of research on the outward migration of logistics facilities, followed by the discussion of the gaps in the existing literature.

Tokyo Metropolitan Freight Survey (TMFS)

As mentioned earlier, we use the data from the 2003 and 2013 TMFS. The TMFSs are establishment surveys conducted by the Transport Planning Commission of the Tokyo Metropolitan Region (TPCTMR). The survey area for the 2003 TMFS is 15,950 km2, covering the prefectures of Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, and the southern part of Ibaraki. The survey area was expanded for the 2013 TMFS by 7099 km2 with the inclusion of the southern parts of Gunma, Tochigi and the northern part of Ibaraki. The survey

Tokyo Metropolitan Area

The TMA is the largest metropolitan area in Japan in terms of residential population and the center of politics and business. Furthermore, the TMA is an international gateway where the busiest seaports and airports in the country are located. The urban structure of the TMA is monocentric, having the highest activity density in the Special Wards of Tokyo in the center. The expressway system that consists of ring and radial toll roads has been developed, though still incomplete, with the busiest

Conclusion

This study used arguably the most comprehensive freight survey in the world to investigate how the decentralization and the structural change in urban logistics system in the TMA affected the shipment distances and truck traffic. The analysis sheds light on the details, especially the relationship between the locations of logistics facilities, shipment origins and destinations, and shipment distances, that are virtually impossible to discern in other cities due to data limitations. Despite the

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Transport Planning Commission of the Tokyo Metropolitan Region for sharing the data for this research. This research received funding from the National Center for Freight and Infrastructure Research and Education (CFIRE) (DTRT12-G-UTC19), and the Department of Urban Planning and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago. CFIRE is a national university transportation center supported by the US Department of Transportation.

References (28)

Cited by (0)

View full text