2nd EXCHANGE of EXPERIENCE event held in Italy!
On 8 and 9 November 2023, the Municipality of Rimini in cooperation with TTS Italia organized the 2nd EXCHANGE of EXPERIENCE event of the SPOTLOG project!
The event "Approaches and solutions for a collaborative and socially responsible last-mile logistics" focused on challenges for urban logistics, especially the last-mile ones, offering an overview of European best practices.
The days was opened by an overview of the SPOTLOG project and Rimini challenges within the mobility sector. The Municipality of Rimini discussed changes in urban landscapes and new approaches to personal mobility and last-mile logistics with a strong focus on cargo-bikes.
Metis Social Cooperative told more about its Bike park velostation: the idea of making available to citizens a cargo-bike fleet in Rimini, with a social goal of use of cargo-bikes for every-day routine.
Three external stakeholders were involved for sharing their European experience.
The Interreg Central Europe GRETA told about challenges, vision, aims and synergies of the project. Mazovia Energy Agency highlighted ecological transport solutions and the importance of education in green transformations. Finally, Pin Bike explained its initiatives for promoting sustainable mobility through gamification.They proposed tracking sustainable mobility behavior ) and introduced the Social Deliveries initiative, which makes complete sense to integrate for a holistic perspective to improve urban logistics with higher goals.
The project partners shared their local actions for implementing a low-carbon logistics. The audience learned more about: Cēsis city multimodal mobility center; the Marguerite programme supporting the implementation of LTZ by helping craftsmen and retailers move towards a greener logistics; the eRetrofit initiative in Tampere, a pioneering project in the field of sustainable transport; Mechelen successful strategies for urban last-mile deliveries, including access restrictions, consolidation hubs, and cycling solutions, along with funding start-ups and providing subsidies for cargo bikes. The importance of assessing life cycle impacts of smart and sustainable mobility innovations was underlined by the University of Aveiro.
On the second day, participant ride around the city discovering the cycle path and the area envisaged for the creation of a mini cyclo-logistics hub: the pilot area of the Municipality of Rimini in SPOTLOG.
The event highlighted the need to capitalize previous experiences and define synergies among different initiatives and funding schemes, to avoid overlapping and maximise results. Not to loose the work carried out, special attention should be paid to the follow-up phase of pilots when it really becomes difficult to engage stakeholders due to the uncertain benefits for all players. Finally, it has emerged that changing habits is one of the most difficult aspects of mobility and logistics transformations.
For the Municipality of Rimini press release (in Italian) click here