Annex to ENCLOSE Press Note

Transcription

1 Annex to ENCLOSE Press Note Workshop on urban logistics planning in Växjö The topic is "Planning for sustainable city logistics policies and measures in small and midsized European cities". Jointly to EU ENCLOSE project meeting, an international workshop will be held on the next 7th of April in Växjö with the aim to network and disseminate the intermediate results of the 9 small and medium sized European cities of the ENCLOSE project, and to take advantage of the Nordic experience on sustainable city logistics. The workshop is an opportunity to discuss common issues, challenges and results together with a number of European municipalities. The topic of the workshop is urban logistics planning: how can freight delivery be efficient in Sweden s cities? This is the question that the workshop in Växjö wants to address using all the ENCLOSE European partners (including 9 cities: Lucca, s'- Hertogenbosch, Trondheim, Burgos, Almada, Serres, Alba Iulia, Balchik, Dundee), who come to Sweden hosted by the Energy Agency for Southeast. The workshop speakers are the most important organisations in the Swedish region: VTI, the Swedish Transport Administration, Chalmers, SKL. Furthermore, representatives from several Swedish cities will join the event to share experiences from their activities to reduce the environmental impact from transportation. The European Energy Agency will also join the event as speaker. The workshop will be chaired by Cecilia Mårtensson, Sweden Municipalities and Regions. The workshop is free The full program is available on Background Freight transport and city goods distribution are widely known factors of energy consumption and environmental degradation in European urban centres, and increasing efforts have been undertaken in EU countries to improve operations and reduce their negative impacts. In this context, road freight transport accounts for 26% of global air pollution from traffic in cities, and 23% of carbon emissions. City Logistics in Europe Based on gathered evidence, there is today a considerably growing consensus on the view that more sustainable urban freight operations and significant benefits in terms of energy efficiency can be achieved by an appropriate mix of different measures, such as: - Urban Consolidation Centres, - optimised urban freight transport and delivery plans, - clean vehicles and low emission technologies, - restrictions and public incentive policies, 1 1

2 - last mile and value added services, - integration of city logistics processes within the overall management of urban mobility. Whilst efforts and city logistics innovation projects have been undertaken in most European capitals and major cities (like e.g. Barcelona, Berlin, London, Paris, Stockholm, etc.), Small and Medium Historic Towns (SMHTs) particularly those involving historic centres, are somehow lagging behind, as they have to face and overcome several barriers (related to e.g. shortage of resources, competences, organisational structures, institutional backing, etc.) to be able to effectively embrace innovation, adopt and implement appropriate plans and measures towards sustainable city logistics. They also have additional constraints and challenges related to their specific territorial, social and economic characteristics (e.g. difficult mobility and significant freight distribution flows, higher impacts of environmental pollution on citizens and quality of life, etc.), and yet show increasing demand of effective measures as well as large potentials for improvements of energy efficiency and sustainability of city logistics operations. City Logistics in Sweden In Sweden as well as elsewhere in Europe, there is a trend toward an increasing proportion of the population living in cities. The trend towards growing and dense cities has to be reconciled with political demands for increased durability with reduced environmental impact and improved energy efficiency. This means that cities need to streamline various functions where transport plays a key role. There is a need for more efficient local and regional freight transport in Sweden. Freight transport in the city have special right conditions because these take place in an environment with dense edification, narrow streets, many residents, work locations and meeting locations. Furthermore, the most features that involve several actors with different perspective and different goals with their specific operations are e.g. government organisations, freight forwarders, shippers, trading and property owners. Individual actor s goals rarely coincide with the city's layout and functionality, thus asking authorities for city logistics development. People transport has long been the focus in planning and policy, while city logistics has usually not been on the agenda. The challenge is to meet the need for freight transport in the city to support economic, social and cultural development, while minimising negative impacts such as traffic congestion, noise and environmental impact. This requires solutions aimed at streamlining flows, e.g. business cooperation and loading, utilisation of new technologies such as environmentally friendly cars and information technology, and policy for optimal control through regulation and pricing. In practice, however, successful solutions are a combination of measures within the different categories. The current situation in Sweden is that more and more municipalities have begun to pay attention to freight transport in the city, but work on freight planning and control has been so far limited. Most initiatives involve coordinated goods distribution to the municipality's own activities such as schools and elderly care. A number of cities in Sweden are working actively with concrete measures for cargo transportation within the city, such as Gothenburg, Stockholm and Ystad. Malmo is pioneering city when it comes to incorporating goods as a mode of transport in their traffic. Several medium sized municipalities, such as 2 2

3 Linköping, Norköping and Eskilstuna have been involved in and conducted studies and projects in relation to the transport of goods in the city. In several municipalities in Sweden, there is a greater awareness of freight transport elements for a sustainable city, and the importance of public authorities take an active role but it is lacking prerequisites in many cases. Questionnaire studies of a large number of Swedish municipalities show a lack of clarity regarding responsibility for freight transport issues, but also the need for increased knowledge of freight management within local authorities. It is difficult to assign priorities to get started with the right kind of action when e.g. there are no analysis of the present situation and of the present and future needs of freight transport. There is a need for efficient methods, processes, decision support, and allocation of resources such as time and planning tool for this work. There is thus a need for an improved planning process where the city's goods supply is treated as an integral part of transport planning at the level of passenger and integrated with urban planning in general. These are the real questions that ENCLOSE manages to overcome. ENCLOSE project ENCLOSE stands for ENergy efficiency in City LOgistics Services for small and mid-sized European Historic Towns. The project is funded by the European Commission under the Intelligent Energy - Europe (IEE) program, supporting organisations working for sustainable energy. The project runs from May 2012 to November 2014 and its main goal is to create energy-efficient and sustainable city logistics in European small and medium sized historic towns with effective measures, that provide substantial environmental improvements and profits. The project works to raise Alba Iulia, Romania, ENCLOSE follower town awareness about this challenge. Innovative city logistics projects have already been implemented in many European capitals and major cities, such as Barcelona, Berlin, London, Paris, etc. However, small and medium sized historic towns have not generally been able to follow these examples, because they have had to face and overcome significant obstacles, often related to their size. These include lack of resources and professional Trondheim,Norway, ENCLOSE forerunner town expertise, inadequate size in terms of magnitude of the distribution operations to effectively adopt and implement appropriate plans and actions towards a sustainable city logistics. Yet there is a trend in many European historic cities, inspired by what has been achieved elsewhere, about the need to overcome these obstacles and deal with the effects of 3 3

4 environmental degradation on the historic environment and citizens quality of life. Thus, delivering sustainable city logistics to small and medium sized historic towns into practice requires guidance. The project aims to significantly increase the adoption of best practices in logistics in European small and medium sized historic towns. This will be done by showing practical solutions and raise awareness through local distribution and media events in all 13 partner countries. The project's conclusion and recommendations will be widely disseminated through Heritage Europe and Logical Town Association s network of small and medium sized historic cities in over 30 European countries. ENCLOSE forerunner and follower towns Several small and mid-sized historic cities in Europe cannot afford the investment in the start-up phase and effort is needed to evaluate plans for energy efficient and sustainable city logistics measures. The forerunner cities of Lucca, Trondheim and Den Bosch can inspire with their concrete solutions for city logistics infrastructure, systems and services already up and running, and can present the related benefits. On the other hand, follower tows (Burgos, Spain; Dundee, UK; Serres, Greece; s- Hertogenbosch, Netherlands; Balchik, Bulgaria; Alba Iulia, Romania) have identified useful measures addressing organisation, operations, technology, service chains, business models and public policies, etc. Forerunner cities delivered criteria for the design of city logistics measures and parameters for the evaluation of the benefit, which can be adapted to followers town plans for sustainable city logistics and evaluation of energy use. Because of the different geographical locations, size, economic structure, local culture, mobility issues among ENCLOSE towns, the approach will be Burgos, Spain, ENCLOSE follower town representative of a wide range of European conditions, and solutions will be adapt to be applied more generally. Both forerunner and follower towns are producing Sustainable Urban Logistics Plans (SULPs), as well as the evaluation of energy consumption and its environmental impact. Follower towns have already undertaken practical feasibility and transmissibility studies, that are useful to identify the most promising solutions for the optimisation of the local distribution system, and they have demonstrated some soft measures that can contribute to this goal. Among the soft measures selected by each follower town, new regulations on access to the historic centre, with specific criteria for loading/unloading (Burgos, Spain), regulations on time windows (Alba Iulia, Romania), improvements of load/unload area visibility (Balchik, Bulgaria; Dundee, UK) and local campaigns. All follower towns have been debated on solutions through local information campaigns (called Awareness Raising Events), organised by the six ENCLOSE follower towns in the period from March to July The events had a twofold structure along two logical tracks which were focused at first on the best practices of forerunner towns, and then on the 4 4

5 presentation of the general scheme of SULPs. Local stakeholders have been involved as audience in order to increase their awareness of city logistics issues and needs, which had been identified at the local level. The nine ENCLOSE cities are developing local Sustainable Urban Logistics Plans (SULPs) based on feasibility and transferability studies and more in general based on the knowledge, goals and data gained with local campaigns and visits to the forerunner cities. The results of the project will be disseminated to more than 1,000 cities belonging to the networks of Heritage Europe and Logical Town Association. CONTACTS For further information, please contact MemEx Srl, Via Cairoli, LIVORNO (Italy) Tel ENCLOSE project coordinator: Giorgio Ambrosino - giorgio.ambrosino@memexitaly.it ENCLOSE communication manager: Giuliano Bianucci - giuliano.bianucci@lab-mc.com ENCLOSE Newsletters: Communication in the Nordic countries: Jan Sjökvist - jan.sjokvist@energikontorsydost.se Stefan Guerra stefan.guerra@lucense.it WORKSHOP Planning for sustainable city logistics policies and measures in small and midsized European cities - Växjö Konserthus, 7th April /13:00 to 17:30 Participants Cities Experts Communication main event partner 5 5