Planning, Collaboration and Technology in Urban Freight Distribution

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in the webinar “Planning and collaborating to improve Urban Freight Distribution”, organized by Logistop. This initiative seeks to find sustainable and competitive urban logistics solutions. 

Specialists from different fields participated in the event, including Antoine Radal, an expert from Logistop’s Urban Logistics Working Group and UFD specialist consultant at Interface Transport; Enrique Onieva, professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Deusto and coordinator and main researcher at LOGISTAR; Ruth Lamas Borraz, head of the Metropolitan Bicycle Office and technical coordinator of Red de Ciudades por la Bicicleta (RCxB), and the chairperson, Tomás de la Vega, managing director of Logistop.

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Colaboraciones públicas y privadas en la Distribución Urbana de Mercancías

Collaboration between private and public actors is key to the advancement and improvement of Urban Freight Distribution – UFD. From AIR Institute‘s experience in different projects, we know that home delivery is expanding rapidly and that it is important to establish synergies between all the players, despite the mistrust that may exist at the time of sharing certain data and information with competitors in the sector.

The path towards overcoming this mistrust is to demonstrate that collaboration is the best choice because it allows to offer better products and save time for the parties involved.

Here are some of the contributions of some of the participants who propose different tools to improve UFD from different perspectives.

“Building collaborative strategies between private and public actors through co-creation and working groups, like the ones being developed as part of Logistop, is the best means of coping with the ever-changing developments in urban logistics.”

Antoine Radal

“We have to find the most suitable ways of overcoming the reluctance of companies to share their data, ensuring them that their data remains private and invisible”.

Enrique Onieva

“The public administration is aware of the commitment involved in urban freight distribution in order to achieve and face the sustainability challenges posed by the climate emergency situation in which we live”.

Ruth Lamas

Enrique Onieva also presented a specific case of collaborative logistics optimization developed within the framework of the Logistar project. The case used data provided by companies operating in different sectors within the supply chain, to provide stakeholders with solutions based on intelligent algorithms.

No doubt, there is much room for improvement in the optimization of urban logistics space and resources.