• Developed under the umbrella of the 2021 Innovation call of EIT Urban Mobility, S+LOADZ project pretends to accelerate the shift to sustainable and smart city logistics.

• A new digital solution is being developed to manage loading and delivery zones. The French cities of Paris and Argenteuil are two of the four cities that test this innovative solution. 

Paris, 26 October 2022 – S+LOADZ, Sustainable Digital Loading and Delivery Zones, is a 1-year project for EIT Urban Mobility under the innovation programme 2021 of Sustainable City Logistics. This project is developed jointly between 5 European commercial partners, two research institutes and four European cities.

The S+LOADZ project is adapting and piloting the Parkunload solution, a digital platform to control, regulate, monitor, and analyse logistics operations’ loading and delivery zones in urban centres. The platform has three types of end-users: 1) cities, 2) drivers, and 3) traffic agents who transform the delivery/loading activities in urban centres. Through the cities’ interface, cities can virtually manage the rules of the game for the temporary parking of logistics vehicles operating in city centres. 

In 2022, S+LOADZ is being rolled out in 4 cities, including Paris, Argenteuil, Vic, and Ankara. In particular, the city of Paris has been testing this innovation since October 2022 for six months in 160 parking areas for loading and unloading activities located in the 10th arrondissement.   The pilot started in October 2022 and has been built with the support of Gustave Eiffel University and the Metropole du Grand Paris. The city is implementing 100 digital, smart and sustainable loading/delivery zones in their 10th District.

On 26 and 27 October, all members of the consortium and EIT Urban Mobility visited Paris and Argenteuil to participate in the official launch of the pilot project, together with the 10th arrondissement and city officials. There, Paris was recognise as an innovative Living Lab for the transition towards more sustainable urban mobility in Europe.

Follow up on the project and pilot results at http://sloadz.com/.

• S+LOADZ was tested, for the first time in a real urban environment, last month of June in the Catalan city of Vic. Other pilots will be done in Paris, France, Ankara, Istanbul, and mid-sized cities such as Argenteuil within the Greater Metropolitan Area of Paris, to test varying conditions and address different challenges specific to each location. 
  
  
• Co-funded by EIT Urban Mobility and led by FACTUAL, the innovation project S+LOADZ aims to provide both operational and environmental KPIs to accelerate the shift to Sustainable and Digital City Logistics.
  
  

Designing the future of sustainable city logistics

Sustainable city logistics play a crucial role in making cities more liveable and attractive. They must support the consolidation of freight movements and waterways to deliver commodities to and from the city, and contribute to creating more liveable cities with zero-emission vehicles.

A thorough and integrated understanding of the objectives of the (different actors) concerning city logistics, the distribution network, the planning and control of that network, the planning processes, information and communications technology, and organisational structure is necessary to develop city logistics solutions. The regulations set out by the municipal and supralocal authorities are another crucial component of city logistics.

S+LOADZ aims to accelerate the shift towards more sustainable and innovative city logistics based on the complete digital transformation of parking spaces for urban delivery with advanced features tested in several cities and their metropolitan areas, covering different use cases and use case scenarios.

Its objective is ambitious: manage the high demand for logistics parking spaces by achieving a 30% increase in parking rotation and availability, a 50% reduction in illegal parking and an improved economic situation for cities as curbside spaces are used more effectively.

The S+LOADZ project allows analysing and testing of different approaches to variable and dynamic parking rules in more than 500 sustainable delivery zones (also known as S+ LOADZ) by leveraging and advancing the technology provided by Parkunload.

Co-Funded by EIT Urban Mobility, the project is led by FACTUAL. Métropole du Grand Paris, Ville de Paris, Belka A.S (technology and mobility company from Ankara), Ajuntament de Vic Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO and Université Gustave Eiffel from the research sector are some of the EIT Urban Mobility partners involved in the project. Parkunload as commercialisation partner; Artech Consulting, Keita and Ferrovial to support the scalability of the proposed innovative solution made up the final list of partner entities involved in the consolidation of the project

More info: https://sloadz.com

In late May EIT Urban Mobility’s Action and Impact Group together with the Innovation Hub North organised a community building workshop on the challenge area of Sustainable City Logistics. The purpose of the workshop was to support partners and other relevant stakeholders to exchange ideas, ideate, and to start forming winning consortia for upcoming topics of interest under Horizon Europe calls related to Sustainable City Logistics. 

The Royal Norwegian Embassy of Denmark hosted the event at the residence of the Norwegian Ambassador. It was fantastic to see over 50 actors from different sectors across the Nordics, Baltics & Spain come together in this space. The event built on a previous event in September 2021 on Electrified Urban Freight transport hosted at the same venue. EIT Urban Mobility is looking forward to a continuing collaboration with the Royal Norwegian Embassy of Denmark, bringing Nordic and pan-European stakeholders together to tackle the shared challenges facing our cities. 

The workshop 

The event started with an introduction and welcome note from the Norwegian Ambassador, EIT Urban Mobility’s director of Innovation, and the EIT Urban Mobility Innovation team. To share the newest trends and developments within the sustainable city logistics challenge area, three different speakers presented their work and perspectives on this dynamic field.  

Nikolaj Sveistrup, CEO of Urban Agenda and associate partner of Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, facilitated this expert panel, comprised of Allan Larsen from DTU- Technical University of Denmark, focused on digitisation and automation, Eva Errestad from SAMS Norway focused on maritime solutions and Emil Sigbrand from Smart Innovation Norway focused on the importance of social innovation.  

Following this, the participants split into three theme based groups to ideate on potential collaborations on the topics of interest for upcoming Horizon Europe calls related to City Logistics. 

It was great to see such a high level of engagement from all the participants and we look forward to seeing how these kickoff discussions develop. This event was part of the AIG community building event series and will be continued after the summer focusing on the challenge areas of Future Mobility and Mobility and Energy. 

Check out the video below where several participants share their thoughts from the day.