by Walther Ploos van Amstel
The impact of urban mobility, and urban freight transport in particular, on the liveability of an urban area is elevated. Growing urban road congestion in most European cities, to which urban freight transport is an active contributor, vehicle emissions and road safety are big challenges for society.
The Urban Logistics report by Cushman & Wakefield reveals a huge increase in city logistics property space is required across key centres across Europe in the next four years to meet the exponential growth of e-commerce and the resultant need for last mile delivery in cities.
Driverless cars have captured imaginations for decades, but the past few years have seen the technology move from dream toward reality. More formally known as autonomous vehicles, these self-driving cars and trucks have the potential to transform not only personal mobility but transportation and delivery as well.
The NexTrust project has tested an innovative system for last mile e-commerce deliveries in Berlin. The pilot, named ANGEL, runs in partnership with Kisura, an online shopping service, and Berlin Last Mile, a logistical service provider. Since launching in July 2017, ANGEL has shown positive results.
Commercial traffic clogs city streets, contributes to pollution, and drives up the cost of doing business. But there are many ways to do better. Last year, McKinsey and Bloomberg New Energy Finance published An integrated perspective on the future of mobility, which outlined four trends that are rapidly changing passenger transport: electrification, autonomy, connectivity, and sharing.
The Dutch city of Rotterdam’s economy is growing. However, a healthy economy means more pressure on city traffic and air quality. The government and the private sector have joined forces under the name 010 City Logistics to implement sustainable solutions that improve both air quality and mobility within the Rotterdam inner city.
The further development of local policies to stimulate more CO2-productivity in city logistics and a shift to zero-emission city logistics is inevitable: growing political and societal pressure demands it. This push can already be recognized in the existing variety of local regulations, customized to different local circumstances in different cities or parts of cities.
Regulatory policies aim at reducing the negative effects of urban freight transportation, especially those related to traffic, emissions and noise. Nonetheless, stakeholders in city logistics often have divergent objectives, which lead to difficulties upon defining the best possible choices regarding regulation. A new paper on HoReCa deliveries in Paris by MINES ParisTech presents a multi-agent …
Several indicators have been established to monitor and evaluate the sustainability of cities. Urban freight and related transportation activities are under represented in these established frameworks despite the substantial negative impact of urban freight on the environment, society and economy. The result is the lack of an understanding of freight flows’ impact on the liveability of …
Across Europe there are examples of existing tram networks being used to attract businesses to use the network for urban freight transport. Could this extension help make a success of trams in other cities in the years ahead? The Guardian reports about a number of European initiatives in Dresden (D) and Saint-Étienne (F). These cities using …