Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CITYLAB (City Logistics in Living Laboratories)

Teaser

An environmentally and financially sustainable urban freight transport system is a prerequisite for liveable cities. However, goods, waste and service trips in urban areas do impose negative traffic and environmental impacts and take place in space shared with many other...

Summary

An environmentally and financially sustainable urban freight transport system is a prerequisite for liveable cities. However, goods, waste and service trips in urban areas do impose negative traffic and environmental impacts and take place in space shared with many other actors. The European Commission\'s target of essentially CO2-free city logistics in urban centres by 2030 requires considerable work in identifying the right combination of sustainable and cost-efficient freight measures that will most effectively reduce freight related emissions and congestion in cities.

The general objective of CITYLAB is to develop knowledge and solutions that result in roll-out, up-scaling and further implementation of cost effective strategies, measures and tools for emission free city logistics in urban centres by 2030. CITYLAB supports cities working for improved sustainability and liveability and private companies developing new services and business models for improved sustainability and profitability of their logistic activities. This support is embodied in Living Laboratories (Living Labs) where promising solutions are being tested with the involvement of all stakeholders and from which roll-outs over the whole of Europe will be targeted. For this purpose, CITYLAB has identified a group of seven European cities: Brussels, London, Oslo, Paris, Rome, Rotterdam and Southampton that embodies the living labs.

The project focuses on four axes that call for improvement and intervention:
- Highly fragmented last-mile deliveries in city centres;
- Inefficient deliveries to large freight attractors and public administrations;
- Urban waste, return trips and recycling;
- Logistics sprawl

If the four axes for intervention are not explicitly tackled in the EU, the rising populations and densities of cities will produce such an increase in freight transportation that the economic and environmental sustainability will no longer be guaranteed. This, in turn, will endanger the future growth potential of European cities.

Work performed

The project has contributed in several directions during the first reporting period.
I. Knowledge generation and synthesis
The project contributes to synthesising and generating urban freight knowledge with a broader scope than the cities involved in the project. This includes an Observatory of Strategic Developments Impacting Urban Logistics, the first version of which contains an assessment of \'Logistics sprawl and e-commerce\'”. The deliverable “Success factors of past initiatives and the role of public-private cooperation” investigates the urban freight initiatives included in CITYLAB implementations to better understand their role and potential impact for more sustainable urban freight transport. The task is also concerned with identifying the challenges that need to be addressed and overcome by the private and public sectors in ensuring the successful uptake and outcome of the initiatives included in the CITYLAB implementations.

II. Living lab methodology and practice
A first methodology for city logistics living labs has been established, guiding living lab participants through the process of establishing and conducting a living lab in the urban freight transport sector. It builds on existing methodological frameworks but further adapted and fine-tuned to the city logistics sector. Local private-public-research cooperation has been established in each CITYLAB city. Each Living Lab within the CITYLAB project will have an individual construction. CITYLAB will learn from this diversity, and an updated version of the guidelines will be developed at the end of the project capturing lessons from the seven living labs.

III. Implementation actions, data collection and evaluation
CITYLAB supports seven implementations. In each of these, preparations have taken place, and in some, operational tests are ongoing. CITYLAB evaluates how well the seven implementations perform in their specific context and whether the successful ones could be transferred to the other CITYLAB living labs. An evaluation framework has been established, elaborating on the methods used for evaluation and identifying the Key Result Indicators (KRI) needed as input for the evaluation tools. Data collection is now taking place to describe the base situations as well as changed operations resulting from the implementations, using the KRI’s.

IV. Dissemination and preparation of transferability
CITYLAB has been disseminated through various channels including workshops, presentations, stands and posters. When reaching out to stakeholders, a follower group has been established. From this group, based on commitment and interest, a more limited set of transfer cities will be selected. The follower group consists of representatives from 18 cities and regions, and they participated in a project workshop in Paris, including a separate breakfast meeting targeted towards them.

Final results

The knowledge and solutions generated in CITYLAB are expected to increase efficiency and load factors of freight trips in urban areas, and to reduce the negative impacts of freight activities in combination with achieving more sustainable business models for urban freight operations.

Several ex post EU and global level evaluations have shown that multi-stakeholder deployment is the key challenge in the city logistics innovation process. In CITYLAB, we use Living Labs, which is new in city logistics, as an implementation approach to successful fostering innovation deployment. The concept of Living Labs, compared to conventional demonstrations, creates an experiential environment in which stakeholders such as citizens, governments, industry and research, together aim at achieving a shared long-term goal. Thus, reducing conflicting interests, speeding up real-life developments and deployment of innovations. In this environment stakeholders, can co-design, explore, experience and refine new policies, regulations and logistics actions. This implies a process in which implementations are tried out, supported by dynamic prediction and evaluation tools, and the environment is adapted to make it work. Within this process barriers are directly dealt with to have a maximum impact. It is in this framework the CITYLAB implementations operate, supporting the aim to establish city logistics living labs.

The collaborative environment achieved from planning, implementing and evaluating the real-life CITYLAB implementations is a major leap forward from the traditional city logistics initiatives, where demonstrations aim to “prove” the functionality of a solution within a limited and temporary organisation. Because the Living Lab approach focus more on the city environment, CITYLAB achieves more than demonstrating the feasibility of a short-term test pilot, it also allows absorption by the city.

CITYLAB brings a new approach to understanding how various solutions to the problem of managing goods and service logistics in urban centres can be effectively evaluated and implemented. The project develops knowledge and solutions that contribute to replicating and transferring cost-effective urban logistics approaches for improved environmental, safety and financial performance.

Website & more info

More info: http://www.citylab-project.eu.