The Challenge of Urban Freight Transport

1
The Challenge of Urban Freight Transport

• Challenging Future Transport Planning
• SustAccess inspiration seminar
• Gothenburg, Sweden 29 March 2007
• Sönke Behrends, M.Sc., Division for Logistics and
  Transportation,
• Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg,
  Sweden

2
Outline

• Why urban transport?
• European Urban Transport Policy
• The challenge of urban freight transport
• Experiences from BUSTRIP
• Results from BUSTRIP
• Conclusions

3
Why urban transport?

• Urban areas are vital to the economic,
  environmental and social future of the EU
• Urban mobility contributes both to economic
  efficiency and to the quality of life urban
  population
• Urban mobility is increasingly challenged by
  negativ impacts of transport
• ? How to increase mobility while reducing
  congestion, accidents, air pollution and noise is
  a common challenge to all major cities

4
Outline

• Why urban transport?
• European Urban Transport Policy
• The challenge of urban freight transport
• Experiences from BUSTRIP
• Results from BUSTRIP
• Conclusions

5
European Urban Transport Policy

• White Paper on European Transport Policy (2001)
• Recognizes the hughe upsurge in traffic in towns
  and the related problems of pollution, congestion
  and safety
• Hiding behind principle of subsidiarity
  Comission confines itself to promote good pracice
• White Paper Mid-Term Review (2006)
• Green Paper on Urban Transport (2007) to identify
  added value for local initiatives at EU level
• Strategy on the Urban Environment (2006)
• Importance of high quality urban areas in
  delivering the objectives of the EU Lisbon
  Strategy
• Transport plays a key role in the sustainable
  development of cities
• The commission stronlgy recommends local
  authorities to develop and implement Sustainable
  Urban Transport Plans (SUTP)
• SUTP concept developed by Expert Working Group on
  Sustainable Urban Transport Plans (2004)
• ? Urban Transport is a priority for the EU
  Commission in 2007

6
Sustainable Urban Transport Plans
Current institutional planning approach

• Drivers Ongoing transformation processes of
  society and economy increase the need for
  mobility
• Impacts Transport growth implies substantial
  negative effects on all sectors of city life
• Responses The current instituational planning
  approach is not able to cope with the problems

7
Sustainable Urban Transport Plans
Sustainable urban transport

• SUTP is a planning instrument to systematically
  move the city towards more sustainable transport

8
Outline

• Why urban transport?
• European Urban Transport Policy
• The challenge of urban freight transport
• Experiences from BUSTRIP
• Results from BUSTRIP
• Conclusions

9
The BUSTRIP project

• Baltic Urban Sustainable Transport Implementation
  Planning
• 1st project to refine, test and implement
  Sustainable Urban Transport Plans
• BUSTRIP includes
• Peer Review of the Urban Transport Systems in 12
  Baltic Sea Region (BSR) cities
• Development of Sustainable Urban Transport Plans
  (SUTPs)
• Implementation Pilot Actions in each city
• www.bustrip-project.net

10
Sundsvall
Kouvola region
UBC EnvCom Turku
Örebro
Tartu
Pärnu
UBC TransCom, Chalmers Göteborg
Liepaja
Kaunas
Vilnius
Gdynia
Bremen
11
Peer Review Findings

• Freight transport is not a high policy or action
  priority for many cities but is perhaps one of
  the biggest threats
• Freight movements contribute significantly to the
  negative impacts
• 10 of all traffic movements
• 20-30 of all vehicle km
• 16-50 of emissions of air pollutants
• High ambitions to become a logistics centre
  without understanding the implications arising
  from increasing logistics activities
• Competition between cities for new businesses
  undermines the cities sustainable transport
  efforts
• Evidence of difficulty in finding solutions
  attempts to consolidate and coordinate
  distribution activities failed

12
Pilot Action Experiences

• Örebro Urban freight distribution consolidation
• Background A trail to consolidate deliveries by
  organizing cooperation among distribution
  companies failed due to lack of participation
• New approach Coordinate the activities of the
  shop keepers (freight delivery customers)
• Experiences
• Chamber of Commerce and distributors supported
  project
• Initially, shopkeepers showed interest but lost
  it during the planning phase of the project.
• Due to lack of participation the project has been
  ended.

13
Pilot Action Experiences

• Örebro Urban freight distribution consolidation
• Lessons learnt Shopkeepers have
• no willingness to change freight delivery
  patterns
• Freight transport in city centre is no problem
• The majority of shopkeepers receive only few
  deliveries
• There are no direct incentives for shopkeepers
• no possibilities to change freight delivery
  patterns
• Many shops with many deliveries are part of a
  chain and their deliveries are organised
  centrally for the whole chain
• Some shops with a broad range of products receive
  their deliveries from several suppliers that use
  different distributors

14
Results from BUSTRIP

• Knowledge and awareness rising for freight
  transport in cities
• More focus on evaluation and dissemination.
  Failure projects and underlying reasons should be
  presented as frequent as the successful ones.
• Involve all actors and stakeholders
• Combination of incentives and restrictions

15
Outline

• Why urban transport?
• European Urban Transport Policy
• The challenge of urban freight transport
• Experiences from BUSTRIP
• Results from BUSTRIP
• Conclusions

16
Conclusions

• Urban mobilty has a crucial function for the EU
  and is highly challenged by unwanted effects of
  urban transport
• Transport planning in cities is focused on
  passenger transport. Urban freight transport is a
  significant threat and needs a higher policy and
  action priority
• SUTP is an integrated planning approach to
  systematically move towards more sustainable
  transport
• Urban transport is a priority for the EU
  Commission in 2007 (Green Paper on Urban
  Transport). The EU Commission recognizes the
  importance of integrated planning approaches and
  the relevancy of urban freight transport.
• The involved actors in urban freight transport
  should not ignore the problem but need to realize
  that they are part of it.

17
Thank you for your attention!Sönke Behrends,
M.Sc., behrends_at_chalmers.se Division for
Logistics and Transportation, Chalmers
University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden

• Welcome to Final Conference in Turku, Finland
  7-9 November 2007
• www.bustrip-project.net

18
Why do freight projects fail?

• The importance of systematic dissemination of
  obstacles and failures in pilot actions in
  sustainable urban freight distribution
• Paper by Maria Lindholm, M.Sc. and Magnus Blinge,
  Ph.D., Chalmers University of Technology,
  Division for Logistics and Transportation

• Conclusions
• Rumours and negative experiences
• Insufficient evaluation and dissemination
• Poor knowledge or insufficient staffing within
  cities
• Bottom-up or Top-down approach
• Limitation to incentives

19
Conclusions

• Knowledge and awareness rising for freight
  transport in cities
• More focus on evaluation and dissemination.
  Failure projects and underlying reasons should be
  presented as frequent as the successful ones.
• Involve all actors and stakeholders
• Short-term projects need a long-term perspective
• Combination of incentives and restrictions