Initial approach for knowing the impact of informal trade on freight trips attraction estimates

The knowledge of the characteristics of a commercial area allows a better understanding of its urban freight trips, then a better freight attraction estimation and better selection and implementation of urban freight transport initiatives. In developing countries, many commercial areas have informal trade. Informal trade has not been considered either for freight trip attraction estimation or for initiatives implementation, despite it could attract freight trips and block streets and sidewalks. This paper aims to estimate and compare freight trip attraction with and without considering informal establishments, to get an initial impact of informal trade in commercial areas of developing countries. A comparison of freight trip attraction in an area estimates with and without informal trade is made considering two supply situations, the first one considers that formal and informal trade share suppliers and the second considers that formal and informal trade have different suppliers. The results indicate that informal trade must be considered in freight trip attraction in an area estimate depending on the amount of informal trade presence in a commercial area, since it impacts freight trip attraction in an area estimates according to it. Also, the supply form of informal trade in the commercial areas must be considered such as sharing or not of suppliers with formal trade, which impacts directly the trips attracted due to the additional trips made exclusively for informal trade.