7. Conclusion
This article presents the author's concept of city process maturity in reference to planning and implementing urban freight transport activities. It is understood as a state which gradually changes by means of the collection of properties reflecting the capacity and the involvement of the local authorities, which allows the planning and implement UFT tasks. Thus, the model is confined only to the data regarding the stage of planning and implementation, whereas the stage of control, which involves also the assessment of the success of the implemented projects (ex posts) was omitted. Firstly, the success of the implemented projects regarding city logistics is influenced by many factors. Some of them depend on the decisions made by local governments such as the development of strategic plans regarding urban freight transport, cooperation with other stakeholders, regular collection and analysis of UFT data. The other groups of factors are those which do not depend on a local authority's decisions. Among them are for example: legal regulations at the national/European level; the access to modern technologies in the region, the inclination of the residents/enterprises to modify communication behaviors, the city budget and also, what seems significantly important, the multiplicity of expectations and involvements of various UFT stakeholders (residents, shippers, receivers, transport companies, etc.). Each of those stakeholders represents different opinions, different aims and expresses their own individual expectations with regard to urban freight transport, which are not always consistent with the expectations of other stakeholders. Thus, the success of projects is not only dependent on the maturity of local governments but actually on the maturity of all UFT stakeholders. The introduced model in the paper allows the classification of cities as those, which are characterized by a higher level of maturity regarding planning of freight transport in a city and with regard to the scope of the implemented project. What distinguishes this concept is a holistic and quantitative approach to the assessment of planning and implementing strategic activities in the field of urban freight transport. According to this concept such a maturity of cities may be determined as: low maturity where freight transport is a low priority for local authorities especially in a strategic planning (zi < 0,4) and the number of projects carried out in this field is marginal (usually implemented projects (if they were implemented) concern regulatory solutions connected with the time or spatial limits for delivery vans in particular places of the city; pi < 0,3); low/medium maturity of a city where zi < 0,4 and pi ≥ 0,3 or pi < 0,3 and zi ≥ 0,4); medium maturity – local authorities start to notice a UFT problem, the number of implemented projects is much higher, although this field needs many improvements, medium/ high maturity of a city where zi ≥ 0,7 and 0,3 ≤ pi < 0,6 or pi ≥ 0,6 and 0,4 ≤ zi < 0,7; and high maturity – cities are fully aware of the consequences resulting from UFT, they try to implement various types of projects improving UFT efficiency (pi ≥ 0,6) and they represent a holistic approach to the inclusion of UFT in a strategic planning in cooperation with other stakeholders (zi ≥ 0,7). Nevertheless, on the highest level of the city development there may be a situation that some solutions may turn out to be out-of-date or unsatisfactory for stakeholders. Therefore, also on this level constant developments and improvements are needed.
