Reducing urban logistics impact: webinar key learnings

The Policy Learning Platform organised a webinar on 19 September 2024. Katharina Krell and Simon Hunkin, Thematic Experts for a Greener Europe, tackled the topic of reducing the impact of urban logistics. Together with the speakers and participants, they discussed how customers habits and the increase of online commerce could be mitigated with new solutions for deliveries. 

With an ever-increasing number of deliveries to households and businesses, cities are struggling with increased emissions and congestion from delivery vehicles. Urban Consolidation Centres, regulations on road use, and low-carbon last mile delivery schemes can help cities to overcome this, but these approaches require new uses of ICT, new infrastructure investments, and models of collaboration between private and public sector.

With over 90 participants, the webinar explored several successful case studies arising from Interreg Europe projects. SPOTLOG was among the speakers of the day, represented by Jorge Bandeira, University of Aveiro, Portugal, the project lead partner; and Julien Bouvet, Lille Municipality.

Bandeira highlighted how SPOTLOG is pioneering in the assessment of cities' readiness for sustainable deliveries. SPOTLOG has developed an indicator as an assessment tool to understand the readiness of cities to implement sustainable last mile deliveries. From their work, the partners emphasise:

• The importance of integrated planning to harmonise mobility, goods movement and land use;
• That public-private partnership can promote consolidation;
• That the private sector needs to be encouraged and supported to work together for mutual benefit through resource optimisation, and;
• That policy and regulation must be aligned and coherent.

Bouvet told about Lille, France, as a good example of cooperation with delivery companies.
The Municipality of Lille has demonstrated the benefits of collaborating with delivery companies by establishing a partnership with La Poste, the national mail delivery provider. It delivers a win-win by enabling the city to gain insights on logistics challenges and how mobility plans may impact deliveries, while La Poste can improve its efficiency and gain support for different initiatives. Together, the partnership is exploring cargo bikes, shared logistics, and alternatives to home delivery with first pilot actions and studies underway.

For the webinar recording and further details, click here