Growing online commerce was bringing more deliveries into Swiss cities even before the pandemic. Have you ever wondered how your online purchase gets from the merchant to your door or how delivery traffic could be reduced in your city? At the virtual partner breakfast on 2 March, three partners of the Smart City Lab Basel – Rapp Trans, KurierZentrale, DPD Switzerland – report on incentives, experiences and challenges in city logistics. Exciting insights for the community, specialists and anyone interested.

The partner breakfast starts with Martin Ruesch, Managing Director of Rapp Trans, speaking on the topic of “Challenges and incentives for innovative last-mile offers”. To put it another way, what logistics services are needed for a parcel to get to the right person? Because we typically don’t see everything that goes into it. Most importantly: however short the route may be, the last mile always poses certain challenges. They include the increasing number of delivery journeys in cities, little space available for loading and unloading, energy use and CO2 emissions, conflicts with other road users and high costs.

And what about us? We’d like reliable delivery, please!

There are indeed solutions and approaches available for this challenging last mile, such as microhubs, cargo bikes, collection points and delivery drones. However, new projects are often held back by regulation, the lack of incentives for environmentally friendly services or limited openness to pilot projects. “City logistics deserves more attention in politics and planning,” says Martin Ruesch. Because only then can innovative solutions for meeting delivery and disposal needs in urban spaces develop further.

Bundling in city hubs

Jérôme Thiriet, Managing Director of KurierZentrale, is taking on this challenge: city logistics – we deliver goods and dispose of waste. KurierZentrale is the largest courier provider in the Basel area. For the last mile, KurierZentrale uses a fleet with cycle couriers, Bullitt cargo bikes, Carla Cargo trailers, cargo trikes, Veloform Cargo Cruisers and natural gas powered cars. Goods transshipment takes place at the city hub on the edge of the city, meaning fewer delivery trips into the city and fewer emissions, thus relieving pressure on residential neighbourhoods. “According to research, 68% of all deliveries can be made by cargo bike,” Jérôme Thiriet explains. In short: it’s good for the city and its people. It means less noise, fewer CO2 emissions, more space, less danger of an accident and better supply.

Ville Heimgartner, Project Leader for Innovation Projects at DPD Switzerland, focuses on low-emissions delivery. The first DPD microdepot in Switzerland contributes significantly to this: Green CityHub Basel. Deliveries are brought there by (electric) lorry. They are then transferred to an electric van and delivered. The monthly reduction in CO2 emissions is between 70 and 98%. “We are also testing the use of smaller vehicles such as cargo bikes for specific delivery areas and services,” said Ville Heimgartner. The lab also enables further cooperation with multiple partners: KurierZentrale, SchlaueBox and UpVolt.

Exchange with the community

The topic goes down well over breakfast: there is a lively exchange in the community about the range of e-vehicles, collection points and the high cost of transshipment due to the lack of infrastructure. It quickly becomes clear that we need new approaches to transshipment too, because collection points can only partially replace deliveries to customers’ doors. In particular, demand and acceptance are (still) small at publicly accessible parcel points. Sites on private land are therefore more feasible, for example in housing developments.

Though the exciting partner breakfast on the topic of city logistics is over after just one hour – there’s still a lot to discuss, and – not least – to deliver.

We take away the following points for our projects in the lab:

• The lab is an ideal test space for city logistics solutions – it is a centralised goods transshipment site characterised by openness to new solutions and ideas.
• It is also particularly important to link up and network the many different solutions.
• The topic needs to be discussed more with the public and politicians, as happened at the partner breakfast, to ensure acceptance and build the foundation for long-term implementation.

We would like to thank all those who took part. We are already looking forward to the next partner breakfast on 3 May on the topic of 2nd life battery storage and the partner day on 5 April.