Strong collaboration between cities and industry will pave the way for lively and sustainable cities

Thursday, May 16th, 2019

On May 15^th May 2019 the urban freight and logistics dialogue group of POLIS and  ALICE conveyed its second meeting in Brussels and confirmed the value of this strategic collaboration that will be continued through joint meetings, workshops, webinars, share of experiences and joint projects.

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

Since the launching of the group in November 2018, member cities and industries have shared previous and current practices and initiatives as well as 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 & safety.
• Clean & 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 a great 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 were main topics highlighted.

The group dug in in the five areas through breakout session 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.

Related activities:

• Web-events on Zero Emission Zones for freight delivery (31 march – 2 April 2020)
• 3rd Polis-ALICE Urban Freight public-private dialogue meeting (28-29 November 2019)
• Webinar: L’OREAL vision on future supply chains & city logistics (28th of May 2019)

To know more: Urban freight and logistics Industries & cities strategic dialogue group concept paper

Activities performed with the support of SENSE project“Accelerating the Path Towards the Physical Internet”. The SENSE project has received funding from the European Union´s Horizon 2020 research and innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 769967.