Cities-industry cooperation to accelerate deployment of sustainable city logistics solutions

The vision of this group is to lead transformation in cities so that urban freight and logistics is proactively responding to the pollution, congestion, safety and environmental challenges. The objective is to ensure a robust strategic public-private dialogue to share practices and facilitate collaboration models between cities and industry to prioritise topics and accelerate the deployment of solutions towards a cleaner and sustainable urban freight transport. This is in the wake of the 2011 White Paper on Transport of the European Commission which has established the target to reach CO2-free city logistics in major urban areas by 2030.

Since the launching of the group in November 2018, member cities and industries have shared previous and current practices and initiatives and defined main areas of development and focus point. By now, the group has pooled and mapped a prominent portfolio of living actions, learnings and initiatives and has identified five main areas of intervention:

Air quality, noise and safety
Clean and alternative fleet promotion
Space management and goods consolidation schemes
Data leverage for efficient and productive urban freight planning and execution
Stakeholders collaboration

Our second meeting in Brussels was an excellent framework for lively discussion and exchange. Stakeholder collaboration frameworks and development paths in Brussels, Madrid, Paris and Gothenburg were shared and discussed providing a good ground on the benefits of having permanent stakeholders engagement groups in cities; the learnings and experiences of the implementation of zero and low emissions zones; strategic consensus building around city logistics by industry; and holistic approaches to urban mobility including freight.

The group dug in the five areas through breakout sessions and identified key topics that are currently being addressed from the perspective of cities, regions and industry. Specific actions and key messages were discussed and agreed setting the path for future actions of the group and the individual members.

To know more: see the Urban freight and logistics cities & industry strategic dialogue group concept paper here.