Investigating the Implications of the London Heathrow Airport Expansion for the Landside Freight Industry

Ryan Lee, Moayad Shammut, Julian Allen, Xing Gao, Tianren Yang and Mengqiu Cao
Additional contact information
Ryan Lee: Ministry of Transport and Mining, Kingston 876, Jamaica
Moayad Shammut: School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, Palmerston North 4442, New Zealand
Julian Allen: School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster, London NW1 5LS, UK
Xing Gao: Bartlett School of Planning, University College London, London WC1H 0NN, UK
Tianren Yang: Martin Centre for Architectural and Urban Studies, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PX, UK
Mengqiu Cao: School of Architecture and Cities, University of Westminster, London NW1 5LS, UK

Logistics, 2021, vol. 5, issue 3, 1-18

Abstract: The air cargo industry is hugely important to national economies, trade, and development. Thus far, there has been limited research on the landside freight industry. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of how alterations in the air cargo industry impact on its landside freight counterpart. It also seeks to explore the potential opportunities and challenges this presents, as well as the measures that can be taken to mitigate unsustainable development for the landside freight industry. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the views of key stakeholders, freight industry experts, and other professionals. Our findings show that, if the airport expansion went ahead, the opportunities would generally outweigh the challenges. Increased freight activities and other positive spinoffs would result in the long-term. Increased freight activities and employment were the prime positive implications. Conversely, increased delays due to congestion was the main negative implication. Measures suggested to mitigate the adverse effects of the London Heathrow Airport (LHR) expansion entailed strengthening of consolidation centre efforts, freight collaboration, intelligent booking systems, use of low-carbon technologies, smart scheduling for revising the timetabling of deliveries, and greater use of rail transport for air cargo. The research highlights novel insights regarding existing freight-related issues from industry and academic experts, and further thoughts in relation to increased cargo activities stemming from the LHR expansion.

Keywords: logistics; freight transport; surface access; supply chain; air cargo; London Heathrow Airport expansion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L8 L80 L81 L86 L87 L9 L90 L91 L92 L93 L98 L99 M1 M10 M11 M16 M19 R4 R40 R41 R49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6290/5/3/50/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2305-6290/5/3/50/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlogis:v:5:y:2021:i:3:p:50-:d:592578

Access Statistics for this article

Logistics is currently edited by Ms. Mavis Li

More articles in Logistics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().