SULPITER Think tank platform on urban logistics issues

From 24 to 26 October, the Stuttgart Region Economic Development Corporation (WRS) hosted the meeting of the Think tank platform on urban logistics issues, combined with the 5th Consortium meeting of the SULPITER project. The Executive Secretariat of the Central European Initiative presented the state of play of the Communication activities of the project.

Project partners representing the functional urban areas of Bologna, Brescia, Budapest, Maribor, Poznan, Rijeka and Stuttgart met with high-level experts from France, United Kingdom, Italy and Greece, to exchange best practices and knowledge on urban logistics and planning.

Stakeholders engaged in discussions regarding; the promotion of light electric freight vehicles and cycles to improve city logistics (Jacques Leonardi), the role of new technologies in supporting logistics operations in our cities (Andrea Campagna), how to enable knowledge and understanding of urban freight distribution and service trips in order for cities to implement effective and sustainable policies with the NOVELOG methodology (Georgia Aifadopoulou), the importance of freight quality partnerships for transport spatial planning (John Bourn) and the business model of the locker bank “Bentobox” to address the challenges of urban freight transport (Thomas Zunder).

The next and final step for the functional urban areas involved in SULPiTER is to produce their own Sustainable Urban Logistics Plan (SULP) taking into consideration the best practices, the analysis carried out on their territories and the Freight Quality Partnernships that were set up in the previous moths.  SULPs are a very important planning instrument focusing on city logistics that effectively complements sustainable mobility plans. SULPs will be presented during the final conference of the project, expected in May 2018 in Bologna (Italy).