The European Union launched several initiatives meant to draw attention on the need to reorganise urban freight transport in order to render it greener, cheaper and more sustainable. Currently, Urban Freight Transport and Logistics – UFTL, as a European legislation and regulation, is separated into urban transport and freight transport. UFTL’s complexity provides urban freight transport with features that render it different from the categories it currently falls into. The EU has been financing projects in order to separate UFTL and have a better management of the issues related to urban freight transport. The most important project is Best Urban Freight Solutions (BESTUFS). Once finalized, this project, together with a study on EU’s urban freight policies and strategies, will lay the basis for the elaboration of the first European Urban Freight Action Plan.
Freight transport represents around 10% of urban transport, shows “Inner Urban Freight Transport and City Logistics”, a study developed through the Promotion Of Results in Transport research And Learning program (PORTAL).
In most cases, urban transport is at the end of the transport chain or door-to-door flow. It involves a high number of transit runs and, implicitly, a high frequency of vehicles/km. This, together with a series of urban constraints, such as high population density in industrial areas, poor infrastructure with many narrow streets, low number of logistics centres and terminals, poor operations systems etc. raises a series of major issues, for the urban freight transport system and for the cities themselves: traffic jams, high level of pollution (air and noise pollution), high energy consumption etc. Unlike non-urban freight transport, the development capacity of urban freight transport is directly related to the development capacity of the cities. Most European urban agglomerations are very close to the normal development limit. At the same time, the municipalities decide to shut down traffic in the areas with high tourist interest and in this case freight transport is seriously affected. That is why the European Union elaborated a series of measures based on which the cities can develop an efficient freight transport system. The EU plans to implement this model in all the urban agglomerations in its member states.
EU’s study identifies four major objectives: the license and regulations system, which is aimed at guaranteeing a fair exchange of freight (in terms of costs and taxes), seeing as there are discrepancies between the centre and the outskirts of a city; the use of eco-friendly vehicles and fuel; the use of ITS systems to improve urban freight flows; the use and free access of all transport operators in urban logistics centres.
Local authorities don’t have special urban freight transport departments
The Best Urban Freight Solutions project, which was initiated in 2000, aimed at developing a joint platform for best practices in the field of urban freight transport. The main objectives focus on intensifying the collaboration between the authorities and the industry and taking part in the decision-making process of all those involved in UFTL. One of the initiatives promoted by this project is promoting the creation of a special department within the local administrations, in charge of coordinating urban freight activities. This initiative was taken after the studies showed that 25% of European cities don’t have a special department for urban freight transport and 44% have just one person in charge of the freight sector.
BESTUFS simulated several scenarios which aim at developing a more efficient urban freight transport system. A similar project is currently taking place in Athens, where all the intermodal terminals, freight sorting centres and supermarket storage areas were connected through a single network, proving that the integration of logistics centres in urban agglomerations can help fluidize freight flows.
by Alin Lupulescu
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