Citylab - Presentations

Growth of Electric Freight and Consolidation in Urban Logistics, London, 12 May 2017

Hosted by Transport for London and Gnewt Cargo and co-organised by the University of Westminster the workshop attracted 49 people from industry, cities and research. The day began with a site visit to the Gnewt Cargo depot in Southwark who operate the world’s largest all-electric commercial vehicle fleet of around 100 vehicles..

Sam Clarke (Gnewt Cargo) gave an overview of the company’s development and its operations. The Citylab implementation involves a scaling-up of a parcel delivery operation in central London run on behalf of a large parcel carrier specialising in B2B deliveries (TNT) by a small ‘last-mile’ carrier that specialises in electric freight deliveries (Gnewt Cargo). The lack of available, affordable sites in inner and central London for similar micro-depots to facilitate the upscaling of this sustainable last-mile delivery approach was discussed, together with the upgrades needed to the electricity network to permit greater use of electric freight vehicles in London.

Jardar Andersen (TOI), the project leader of Citylab, provided a brief overview of the Citylab project and the other urban freight implementations and research activities taking place in the project. Link to presentation

Jacques Leonardi (University of Westminster) (below left) presented examples and findings of previous trials and demonstrations of both consolidation and the use of clean vehicles in urban freight transport in European cities, including the barriers identified to growing and scaling-up these operations. Link to presentation

Leonardi Steele

Steve Steele (Transport for London) (above right) explained the future challenges faced by road freight transport in London and the strategic approach being taken by TfL. This comprises the 3Ms: i) minimise road kms; ii) match demand to the network and; iii) mitigate the impacts of each trip. He emphasised the importance of land-use planning in future urban freight solutions and provided an overview of existing work of TfL in helping to facilitate the consolidation and retiming of urban freight operations. Link to presentation

Andy Wilson (TNT) talked about TNT parcel operations and developments over the last 35 years and their recent collaboration with Gnewt Cargo as part of Citylab where Gnewt make their central London deliveries (around 3,000 parcels per week) on their behalf. He explained TNT’s desire to use a redesigned version of the mobile hub that had been developed for use in Brussels in the Straightsol project but which was on hold due to current lack of available land for it. Link to presentation

Simon Roberts (Transport for London) gave insight into the history of air quality challenges faced in London and the actions taken to address the fact that NOx safety limits are exceeded across the city. He outlined the Mayor of London’s planned response with the Toxicity Charge that is due to be implemented this year, and the Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) that is expected to commence in 2019 and then be extended across greater areas of London over time. This scheme will require vehicles to meet specified emissions standards or pay a fee to enter the ULEZ. Link to presentation

Dan Evanson (Arup) presented the work that is being carried out into reducing the impacts of personal deliveries to workplaces in Bee Midtown (a Business Improvement District in Holborn, central London in which 200,000 people work each day). He outlined the difficulties faced by businesses in terms of pressures placed on their post rooms in handling many personal deliveries for their staff from many different freight operators and the impacts on the overall transport system. In an attempt to reduce such impacts, Bee Midtown, in conjunction with Arup, has set up a personal deliveries scheme in which employees can specify an alternative delivery address at the point of ordering goods online - this alternative address is a freight operator’s depot rather than their place of work. The freight operator will then consolidate these goods that it receives and carry out deliveries to the workplaces twice per day, thereby reducing the pressure on business post rooms. In addition the freight operator is using electric vans for these deliveries thereby reducing the quantity of diesel vehicles operating in these locations. This scheme is initially being offered free of charge to employees. Link to presentation

Follower City presentations and discussions

Citylab Transfer Cities Budapest (Patrik Toth, BKK Centre for Budapest Transport; Levente Eros, Kantaa)

Madrid Urban Freight Overview (Enrique Garcia Cuedo, Municipality of Madrid; Maria Lopez, SEUR)

Greater Manchester Urban freight plans and measures (Helen Smith, Transport for Greater Manchester; Graham Dixon, ESPRIT Warehousing & Docks)

Following the presentations above, participants were organised into three round-table discussion groups. Each group focused on the needs and interests of the three follower participating cities - Greater Manchester, Budapest and Madrid – with city authority and business representatives from each in attendance. Discussions included ways in which follower cities can learn and build on the London Citylab implementation, the living lab concept and how to establish successful partnerships between the public and private sectors in their city.

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