Urban Freight

The Urban Freight Working Group is engaged in peer-to-peer exchange to share best practices on sustainable urban freight systems.

As concerns about air pollution, climate change, traffic congestion and safety increase, logistics is essential to achieving more sustainable urban mobility. Urban freight is a top priority for POLIS and its members.

The Urban Freight Working Group (UF WG) provides cities and regions with an open platform and safe space to address challenges, share best practices, and enhance collaboration, prioritising topics and expediting innovative solutions. Online and in-person meetings and site visits facilitate exchanges and sharing of knowledge, fostering collaboration among POLIS members and beyond.

Since 2019, POLIS has joined forces and collaborated strategically with the Alliance for Logistics Innovation in Europe (ETP-ALICE), becoming a reference in the sector. The collaboration culminated in a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2023.

Both organisations foster public – private dialogue and partnerships through annual online webinar series and in-person meetings to devise cleaner, more efficient urban logistics solutions. The POLIS-ALICE Joint Guide for advancing towards zero-emission urban logistics by 2030 brought together the views of a wide range of stakeholders and experts to guide local and regional authorities and companies to address five key areas of intervention for taking sustainable urban freight to the next level.

POLIS is a partner within many logistics-focused EU-funded projects, such as URBANE, GREEN-LOG, DISCO, UNCHAIN, MOVE21, MoloHubs, and focused on road freight decarbonisation such as NextETRUCK and ESCALATE. The UF WG promotes regularly exchanges to take advantage of the opportunities offered by EU-funded projects.

The WG also partners with the European Clean Trucking Alliance (ECTA), the Platform for ElectroMobility (PfEM), Transport Decarbonisation Alliance (TDA) and the European Defense Fund Europe among others.

Priority topics 2025

• Sustainable Urban Logistics Plans (SULPs) as a planning tool to guide the transition to greener urban logistics;
• Zero-emission zones (ZEZ-f) for freight: planning approach, benefits and success factors;
• Typologies of agile storage, consolidation models and last-mile distribution schemes (microhubs, multimodal hubs for passenger and freight, parcel lockers, cargo bikes etc);
• Data-driven decision support tools for urban freight planning, e.g. data space, curbside management, physical internet, digital twins;
• Impacts of increased e-commerce and instant deliveries: digitalisation, labour issues, consumer engagement;
• Road freight decarbonisation and the transition to zero-emission trucks;
• Potentially disruptive technologies such as autonomous deliveries, Artificial Intelligence (AI), robotics.

Relevant initiatives

• POLIS has co-lead the subgroup on urban logistics of the Expert Group on Urban Mobility (EGUM) along with ETP-ALICE and ACEA, in 2023-2024. The subgroup counted 27 organisations – including POLIS members – from local authorities, Ministries and private companies across Europe. It has delivered three distinct recommendations, focusing on the implementation of (i) Sustainable Urban Logistics Plans (SULPs), (ii) Data sharing for Zero Emission Urban Logistics, (iii) Accelerated Deployment of Innovative Sustainable Solutions that have been approved by the European Commission in December 2024.
• POLIS is the initiator of the “Urban Logistics Innovation Day”, a yearly event that gathers representatives from the public and private sector. The first edition has been co-organised with ETP-ALICE as the final event of the LEAD project (Brussels, 27 September 2023). The second edition has been co-organised with ETP-ALICE and the DISCO project as a stand-alone event (Brussels, 4 June 2024).
• Joined by many other organisations, POLIS has co-initiated the Manifesto for intermodal, low-carbon, efficient and resilient freight transport and logistics, launched in May 2024 at the first  United Nations Global Supply Chain Forum organised by United Nations Trade and Development and the Government of Barbados. SLOCAT and the Kühne Climate Center have taken a step further by translating the vision of the Manifesto into an overarching compendium of policy and financing interventions to be implemented, also based on the knowledge of numerous transport organisations including POLIS and its members.
• On April 2023, a coalition of more than 50 public and private participants – including POLIS – signed the Green Deal for Sustainable Logistics of the Brussels capital Region. Each organisation has committed to take concrete measures to make urban logistics more efficient and, above all, sustainable. POLIS will encourage exchanges with European cities and regions that have established similar initiatives and are working to decarbonise urban freight.