EU Urban Freight Projects Find Common Ground

Polis is a CITYLAB and NOVELOG consortium partner and organised the CIVITAS Urban Freight Conference.

In the context of growing cities and environmental constraints, the management and delivery of freight in urban areas is a huge challenge for the twenty-first century. Citizens live under gridlock of smog and towns are blocked by congestion. The success of e-commerce and delivery services are likely to worsen the problem in the future. Therefore, the European Commission supports research approaching the negative impacts of freight transport. They aim to find innovative solutions that satisfy the needs and interests of all actors.

The first conference day focused on the key results and messages of the four projects and placed them into the context of current EU perspectives and strategies as well as necessary efforts to promote new cooperation models for engaging and supporting public-private partnerships for urban logistics.

Robert Missen, Head of Unit at DG MOVE’s research and innovation unit, awarded Transport for London (TfL), London’s transport authority with the SUCCESS Award. He pointed out: “London is a best practice in fostering construction logistics improvement, by means of a wide number of voluntary and mandatory actions.” TfL has introduced measures which improve the logistics in construction sector amounting up to 35% of London’s freight transport volume. London’s approach focuses on research, guidance, regulation and enforcement as well as stakeholder engagement.

The project coordinators explained the contribution of their projects to improve urban freight movements across Europe:

Georgia Ayfantopoulou, the coordinator of NOVELOG stated: “NOVELOG generated knowledge for urban freight transport planning and delivered tools for supporting multi-stakeholders cooperation in implementing innovative city logistics solutions and adopting cooperative business models in UFT.”

On the occasion of the conference, Jardar Andersen, coordinator of CITYLAB said: “CITYLAB has brought together industry partners, authorities and researchers testing Living Labs as a collaborative approach to tackle city logistics issues. The project set out recommendations for moving towards emission free city logistics in major urban centres by year 2030.”

Eleni Zampou, the coordinator of U-TURN emphasised: “U-TURN formulated shared logistics models for urban freight and implemented tools that enable their evaluation and implementation. Moreover, U-TURN provided empirical evidence regarding shared logistics models that was derived by their application in the fast-moving consumer goods, fresh food and online grocery sectors.”

Francesco Ferrero, the coordinator of SUCCESS added: Construction is an industry sector scarcely affected by innovation. Supply chains are seldomly an object of research, despite their considerable environmental and socio-economic impact. SUCCESS delivered open and reusable tools and methods that cities, construction industries and logistics operators can apply, such as the Construction Consolidation Centres.

Information About the conference and the projects

The CIVITAS Urban Freight Conference is taking place in Brussels on 23^rd and 24^th April 2018. The four projects address policy makers, researchers and businesses to present their project results, developed solutions and tools:

The CITYLAB project aimed to develop knowledge and solutions that result in up-scaling and roll-out of strategies, measures and tools for emission-free city logistics in urban centres by 2030. The project’s living lab approach fosters a continuous engagement between industry and local authorities which allows solving urban freight problems. Key findings from each demonstrator will be presented.
The NOVELOG project enabled better knowledge and understanding of urban freight distribution and service trips to help cities implement effective and sustainable policies and measures and to facilitate stakeholder collaboration for sustainable city logistics. NOVELOG will present its tools for sustainable city logistics planning processes.
The SUCCESS project targeted the construction sector and aimed to identify new methods and tools taking into account the possible implementation of Construction Consolidation Centres in order to improve construction logistics and decrease negative externalities. SUCCESS will present its methodological and technological tools helping to better organise construction logistics.
The U-TURN project aimed to identify new models for urban food transport and to develop and propose innovative business models from a new focused toolkit to achieve more efficient operations – both environmentally and economically. The project results show that there are significant opportunities for transport collaboration in grocery supply chains to reduce costs and that further exploitation of research results or technology transfer is needed.

The event features presentations, debates, poster sessions and exhibitions, breakout and training sessions, workshops and awards. Over 150 participants are expected to participate in the event including high level representatives from the European Commission.

CityLab, NOVELOG, SUCCESS and U-Turn are financed by the Horizon 2020 programme and part of CIVITAS, a European network of cities which was launched by the European Commission in 2002 and encourages local authorities to engage in cleaner and better transport solutions. Since then, the CIVITAS initiative has tested and implemented over 800 measures and urban transport solutions in the context of various demonstration projects.