Cross River Partnership (CRP) has been awarded more than €90,000 to develop improvements in city logistics across a number of European cities over the next six months.

The 'Freight TAILS' (tailored approaches implementing lasting solutions) project will address the challenges posed by increasing freight movements within an urban environment.

Project aims are to establish whether different approaches to issues surrounding the delivery and servicing activity in urban areas are required for different areas within cities, to achieve continuous real improvements in greenhouse gas emissions and therefore air quality and traffic management.

Action plans will be established to develop sustainable urban logistics approaches - such as micro/consolidation, SME co-ordination, retiming deliveries, efficient road space allocation - in specific urban areas. These could include areas of high multi-tenanted office blocks and high street retail areas; areas dominated by single user activity, such as a university campus or public sector administration; and historic central areas.

Business cases for different approaches, data on greenhouse gas emissions and traffic improvements, and recommendations for implementation will be key elements of the action plans.

The CRP is keen to hear from any city that has an interest in this topic, in particular cities from less developed regions experiencing issues in relation to delivery and servicing activities.

Funding was awarded under the URBACT III programme and will support the development of a larger bid (up to €750,000) for the project to be implemented 2016 – 2018.

Freight TAILS Phase 1 is led by CRP in partnership with Maastricht (The Netherlands), Parma (Italy), Plascencia (Spain), and Suceava (Romania). Over the course of the next six months, it aims to expand the partnership to total up to 12 European cities for the full Phase 2 application.

For more information on Freight TAILS please contact Charlotte Knell, CRP project manager, cknell1@westminster.gov.uk.

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