CityLogistics

NEXTLOGIC: What eight European cities reveal about what actually works in urban logistics

The Horizon Europe project NEXTLOGIC has released its first major deliverable (D1.1), Urban Logistics Challenges, a report that combines a state-of-the-art review with real-world benchmarking and primary data collection across the project’s eight EU Mission Cities: Aarhus, Bergamo, Differdange, Dublin, Frankfurt, Heidelberg, The Hague and Wroclaw. Coordinated by the University of Luxembourg and led on …

Who counts as a stakeholder in urban freight? A new review says the field has a blind spot

A new systematic literature review in Transport Reviews by Oliver Olmedo, Otgondulam Boldbaatar, Carla Tejada, Travis Fried, Paul Buijs, Sarah Dennis-Bauer and Anne Goodchild asks a deceptively simple question: when urban freight scholars talk about “stakeholders,” who exactly do they mean, and who gets left out? The team screened 6,419 articles, narrowing them to 54 …

GREEN-LOG publishes policy roadmap for zero-emission urban logistics in Europe

The Horizon Europe project GREEN-LOG has released its Policy Recommendations and Strategic Roadmap, a framework designed to help European cities transition toward zero-emission last-mile logistics. Co-funded by the EU with a contribution of roughly €6.3 million, the project ran from January 2023 to June 2026 and was based on Living Lab pilots across five European …

Europe’s zero-emission truck transition: stuck below 5%, and why that’s a problem

A new McKinsey report by Matthias Kässer, Tobias Schneiderbauer and Henrik Becker delivers a sobering reality check for anyone tracking freight decarbonization in Europe: despite nine years of model launches and more than 45 zero-emission (ZE) truck models now on the market, new registrations of ZE trucks remained below 5 percent as of 2025. That’s …

Beyond electrification: a new model shows where urban logistics decarbonization really pays off

A new study in Case Studies on Transport Policy by Annette Rondaij, Bram Kin, Hans Quak, and colleagues (LiLS partners: Dutch TNO, HAN, and BUAS) offers a timely corrective to the electrification-first narrative that dominates urban freight policy. While battery electric vehicles remain the default answer to decarbonizing city logistics, the authors argue that measures …

Why cheaper parcels in the EU could quietly cost us more

Every year, tens of billions of parcels move across Europe, and the price keeps falling. That sounds like good news. But there’s a lesson from an older industry (trucking) that we’re at risk of ignoring. In the 1990s and 2000s, Europe opened up road freight to competition, creating one single market. Prices dropped, trucks were …

A parcel locker is no silver bullet. But it is a test case for fair delivery

Three-quarters of Britons have picked up a parcel from an out-of-home (OOH) point in the past year rather than at their door. That’s the headline from new research by Citizens Advice, the UK consumer watchdog, based on a survey of over 4,500 parcel users. It confirms what the sector has felt coming for a while: …

The Real Power Shift in Parcel Delivery Isn’t Between Carriers. It’s the Platforms Above Them

While PostEurop spends its lobbying efforts arguing the parcel market is “already competitive,” the real competitive battle has quietly moved up a layer, to platforms such as Sendcloud, nShift, Packlink, Parcel International and Seven Senders. These platforms now sit between the merchant and the carrier, holding the rate comparisons, the routing rules, the tracking data, …

Lighter on the Amsterdam Wallen: what a small waste collector can teach city logistics

Amsterdam’s Wallen district is a policy laboratory whether we plan it that way or not: narrow streets, fragile quay walls, dense hospitality, and a constant stream of vehicles nobody particularly wants there. For years, “lighter vehicles in the historic center” has been a slogan more than a practice. Oscar Circulair, a waste and resource collector …