Road freight transport is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas and air pollutant
emissions. Hence, it is increasingly regulated in urban areas to reduce its impact on the
environment and human health. The rich data available from telematics has the potential
to provide high-resolution information, yet research has not been conducted to understand,
evaluate, and ultimately improve the operation and impacts of urban road freight. This paper
demonstrates the role of vehicle telematics data in enabling quantitative assessment of the
impacts of urban freight transport for the effective management of relevant policies. We present
a comprehensive data-driven approach that provides a robust quantitative evaluation and
applies it to a case study of the London Lorry Control Scheme (LLCS) policy in UK. We show
that, for the studied freight operator, the LLCS policy affects their drivers’ route choice both
inside and outside the restricted hours. The spatio-temporal distributions of different parameters
including traffic speeds, fuel economy and emissions at different times of the day are compared
and analyzed. The results indicate that the unintended consequences of urban freight transport
policies can include an extra 15% vehicle-km traveled per trip and 12% liter of fuel consumed
per trip