Urban Logistik Barkarby
How does the future sustainable flows of goods in and out of the city look like? How do we use the space in our city optimally? What transport vehicles will we use and how can the city’s return flows of different materials best be utilized? Those are some of the questions we are investigating in the project Urban Logistics Barkarby, which aims to create a circular solution for logistics in the city.
Background
The trends of urbanisation and increasing e-commerce is contributing significantly to increasing traffic in cities. The negative consequences of this include congestion and emissions. Furthermore, the vehicles performing last-mile deliveries often run partly empty due to inefficient planning and lack of coordination. Meanwhile, properties and areas get deliveries from a number of different vehicles every day.
To solve this a concept called Älskade Stad (Beloved City) has been developed. The concept which has been implemented in Stockholm, Oslo and Malmö, replaces large trucks with small electric vehicles to take care of last-mile deliveries and collection of recycling materials. It uses microhubs for transshipment of goods and materials between the large trucks and the small electric vehicles. The concept increases energy efficiency and reduces congestion and emissions. Thus far the concept has been implemented in collaboration between Ragn-Sells, that performs the last-mile delivery and collection for recycling, Bring that delivers the goods to the microhub, and selected property owners that have signed up to the solution. However, to reap the full benefits of this concept it needs to scale up.
By consolidating deliveries from multiple logistics companies and deliver them to nearby addresses fewer vehicles can be used and the miles travelled can be reduced, while providing the same deliveries. Economies of scale can also be achieved by serving a larger area and more of the customers within that area.
Aim
By developing an open platform all actors within the city that deal with parcels and goods entering and exiting the city can become part of a circular material flow. This means that business actors, recycling actors, and logistics actors can contribute to the solution. The aim of this project is therefore to further develop the concept of Älskade Stad by describing and designing a large-scale urban logistics system for circular material flows, and a sustainable business model for such a solution. The long-term ambition is that this system will be implemented and tested in Barkarbystaden, the largest city development project in northern Europe.
Methodology
The development is driven in collaboration with the municipality of Järfälla and the city’s businesses, service providers, and property owners. It starts by describing the current situation in terms of logistics flows, which is subsequently optimized through an IT-platform for resource efficient management of available vehicles, storage spaces and other resources in a circular logistics system. Digital support for drivers and personnel, as well as business models and cooperation models based on the digital platform and the microhubs will be developed iteratively in dialog with multiple stakeholders.
Expected results
The project will lead to a minimum viable product, i.e., a basic version of the system, ready for further testing in a real-life setting. The plan is to build and test the solution in a subsequent project.