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Technical Workshop Green Paper of Urban Mobility Minutes of Meeting workshops 5th March 2008 Workshop 1 – Free Flowing Towns and Cities Workshop 2 – Greener Towns and Cities Client: European Commission (DG-TREN) ECORYS Nederland BV P.O. Box 4175 3006 AD Rotterdam Watermanweg 44 3067 GG Rotterdam The Netherlands T +31 (0)10 453 88 00 F +31 (0)10 453 07 68 E [email protected] W www.ecorys.com Registration no. 24316726 ECORYS Transport T +31 (0)10 453 87 59 F +31 (0)10 452 36 80 Table of Contents Preface 7 1 Workshop 1 – Free Flowing Towns and Cities 8 1.1 Welcome and Introduction 8 1.2 Urban Freight 8 1.2.1 Presentation Summary 8 1.2.2 Questions and Comments 11 1.3 Walking and Cycling 12 1.3.1 Presentation Summary 12 1.3.2 Questions and Comments 13 1.4 Statements 15 1.4.1 Segway – Mr. Dallatana 15 1.4.2 Federation of European Motorcyclists Associations (FEMA) – Mrs. Peters 15 1.5 Questions Green Paper and discussion 15 1.5.1 Specific Questions Free-Flowing Towns and Cities 16 1.5.2 General Questions 17 1.6 Closure 18 2 Workshop 2 – Greener Towns and Cities 19 2.1 Welcome and Introduction 19 2.2 Vehicle Technologies 19 2.2.1 Questions and Comments on the Presentation 21 2.2.2 General Questions Green Paper 21 2.2.3 Specific Questions on the Theme 22 2.3 Greener Towns and Cities 22 2.3.1 Presentation Summary 22 2.3.2 Questions & Comments on the Presentation 24 2.4 Statements 24 2.4.1 Velorution - Mr. De Potesta de Waleffe 24 2.4.2 Renault - Mr. Gaudillat 25 2.5 Questions and Comments 25 2.5.1 Concerning the General Questions Posed by the Green Paper 25 2.5.2 Concerning the Specific Questions on Free-Flowing Towns and Cities 26 2.6 Closure 27 Annex – Presentation Slides 28 Disclaimer Neither the European Commission, ECORYS Nederland BV, nor any person acting on behalf of the Commission, is responsible for the use which might be made of the information contained in this document. The views expressed in this document have not been adopted or in any way approved by the Commission and should not be relied upon as a statement of the Commission’s views. Copyright of this report is held by the European Communities. 6 Preface In September 2007, the European Commission published its Green Paper on Urban Mobility. This will be followed by an Action Plan. Following Commission guidelines, an Impact Assessment of this Action Plan is carried out. ECORYS has been selected to carry out this study. As part of this study, ECORYS organised a number of technical workshops on Urban Mobility on behalf of the EC. These workshops have been held at 5, 6, 11, and 12 March 2008. Each of these workshops are summarised in a report. Each report contains the reports of 2 half-day workshops. This report summarises the first and second workshop, which have been held March 5th, 2008 in Hotel Bedford, Brussels. The themes of these workshops were respectively Free Flowing Towns and Cities and Greener Towns and Cities. The sections summarising the presentations by the topic speakers, should be considered jointly with their presentations that have been included in the Annex. Technical Workshop Green Paper of Urban Mobility 7 1 Workshop 1 – Free Flowing Towns and Cities 1.1 Welcome and Introduction Mr. Rahman (ECORYS) welcomes the participants of the workshop and gives a short introduction on the programme of this morning. The theme of this workshop is free flowing towns and cities. Furthermore, he explains that this is the first of the Green Paper’s seven topics. The Workshop is intended to provide input into the stakeholder consultation of the Green Paper as well as input into the Action Plan which is going to follow the Green Paper. Mr. Rommerts (European Commission) explains afterwards the role of the Commission’s delegation during this workshop: listening and observing, not participating as such. He wishes the participants a productive morning. 1.2 Urban Freight 1.2.1 Presentation Summary Mr. Wild (PTV AG) gives a presentation on urban freight transport. He introduces him- self as the project manager of BESTUFS (BEST Urban Freight Solutions). Commercial urban transport is often seen as a problem because: • It causes noise and air pollution • It causes accidents • It aggravates congestion • It occupies urban space Despite these problems, commercial urban transport is important. It can be seen as a key function for EU cities and regions. In other words, urban transport: • Is part and expression of our commercial live, • Guarantees goods supply and waste removal for citizens and enterprises, • Represents very often the “Last Mile” of a transport chain. Since this last mile concerns the transport within the city, this is often also the most expensive part in the transport chain, and • Enables our urban living and is essential for cities. The problems and the importance of urban freight raise the question if cities pay suffi- cient attention and support to urban freight transport. 8 Free Flowing Towns and Cities The importance of the freight transport is shown by an example. The commercial trans- port volume in the city of Chemmitz in Germany, contains of a 352.434 freight transport trips a day! If passenger transport volumes are taken into account, around 1,3 million car trips and 330.000 trips by public transport are made on an average day. Besides the im- portance of the freight transport in terms of volume, the share of energy use and the contribution and air pollution is substantial: • Energy use: between 10% and 30% • Contribution to air pollution and noise: between 20% and 50%. Urban freight transport is slowly changing, due to: • European Legislation. The legislation takes into account: • Emissions, • Energy efficiency and resource consumption, and • All other sustainability dimensions. • Changes in society, such as: • More shopping malls and less small retailers, • Requirements of the citizens related to their living conditions, and • eCommerce • New technology at reasonable costs: • Vehicles, equipment, ICT When taking a closer look at the congestion problem with occur in many cities, it is the question what possible changes can be made in order to make sure commercial transport doesn’t aggravate congestion. Solutions that have been mentioned are numerous, such as the ones listed below. However, some are feasible, whereas others are not. • Less transport orders: changes in orders don’t seem feasible; we want the orders because we want business. • Transport efficiency: a good way for a higher transport efficiency is to consolidate transport flows and a more detailed transport planning. • Transport structure: changing the transport structure is difficult, but for example urban distribution points could be set up. • Final destinations: the final destinations cannot be easily changed, since most destina- tions are houses and shops. • Transport times: more flexible transport times are an option, however one should be careful. Commercial transport can be seen as a possible aggravator of congestion, however, it’s also a victim of congested roads, because congestion leads to an increase of the logistic costs by: • Less operations (less deliveries per day), • Interface problems due to unreliable Estimated Times of Arrival, and • More energy consumption. Freight operators do not oppose to measures aimed on congestion reduction, as long as cost effects on their business are small. Examples are congestion charging measures and measures restricting private car use. Technical Workshop Green Paper of Urban Mobility 9 The city of Barcelona is given as an example. To fight congestion the city introduced a so called multi-use lane. These lanes have a dedicated and enforced use, depending on e.g. time of day. The Variable Message Signs (VMS) system communicates the regulations to the road users. For the future, an automated enforcement system is planned, for now this is done by the police. The effects of using this multi-use lane are (1) a reduction in travel time of roughly 12% to 15%, (2) a reduction in overall illegal parking, and (3) raise of the innovative image of the city. Night time delivery is another example shown the presentation. It is said that there are some businesses already searching for opportunities within this field. Advantages of night-time delivery are cost reductions, shorter transportation times and more reliable transport planning. However, there are some disadvantages to be identified as well, among those are the problems of noise during loading and unloading and as well as the required presence of staff for receiving goods. In the Netherlands, many towns and cities have time windows for delivery. However, because of different local circumstances and regulations, the Netherlands is a patchwork regarding these time windows. This makes it confusing for truck drivers when they are allowed to deliver where. Regarding the efficiency in urban transport, there are huge possibilities to be found, however, measures have to be defined carefully. For example regarding access restrict- ions, one should not narrow the delivery times too much since this won’t be efficient. Regarding measures addressing vehicle standards and limits, the standards should be harmonised. Besides that, operators do their best to be as efficient as possible within given circumstances, they seem to be forced by customers when it comes to delivery. Today’s consumer has very high demands: one could question if the consumer shouldn’t be more flexible and also take into the consequences of his behaviour, for instance by bundling orders, rather than ordering items individually (where it concerns e-commerce for example). There are several potential roles for the European Commission regarding urban transport.

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