The Cargohopper is a solar-powered electric caravan of trailers which, according to the organisers, can do the work of five vans, cutting 30 tonnes of CO2 emissions on a yearly basis.
Like the Gothenburg city delivery programme, local government support was crucial in setting up the Cargohopper in the Dutch city of Utrecht. There are several urban delivery companies turning to cargo bikes, including Outspoken! Deliveryin Cambridge which carries out sub-contracted work for major freight companies. Fees from private transport companies and advertising sales fund the service, and it is expected to be a self-sustaining business by next year and expand into other parts of the inner city.Īccording to a report by the EU-funded research project CycleLogistics, an estimated 51% of goods transported in cities could be shifted to bicycles and cargo bikes, significantly reducing emissions and congestion. Stadsleveransen,part-financed by the EU’s Smartset project, only accounts for 20% of the goods volume in the area where it operates, but it handles the majority of deliveries. The pilot delivery scheme initially served just eight clients when it launched in 2012, but now close to 500 businesses take part – from small offices to major retailers – and more than 350 packages are delivered each day. There is also a small electric van assigned for transporting fresh fish from the harbour to Gothenburg’s Fish Church market. Private transport companies leave their packages at a freight consolidation terminal from where Stadsleveransen’s fleet of two electric cars and two cargo bikes carry the goods the final couple of kilometres.
To facilitate the needs of smaller businesses which are not able to organise early-morning drop-offs, the city of Gothenburg helped launch Stadsleveransen (the City Delivery) to pool together deliveries for shops and businesses within a central zone stretching about 10 streets. The city centre could not compete with the shopping malls outside of town in terms of accessibility by car or parking places, so instead it had to present itself as an inviting and attractive environment which offers more than just shopping.” “It was a quite cramped city centre, where the traffic situation clearly affected the atmosphere and the competitiveness of the area in a negative way. “It was a messy situation here,” says Christoffer Widegren from Gothenburg’s urban transport administration. It takes time to turn around six or seven decades of car-centred city planning – but now it is happening Cars were parked bumper to bumper along busy one-way streets, with pedestrians relegated to the narrow pavement. Go back 10 years and it was a different picture. Normal streets have been turned into pedestrian areas, parking has been prohibited and traffic restrictions mean that normal deliveries with vans and lorries are only allowed between 5am and 10am on the most crowded streets. Cargo distribution has been targeted as part of a long-running initiative to make the inner city area a more attractive environment for walking and cycling. Walk through central Gothenburg’s main shopping streets near the cathedral and you are as likely to see futuristic cargo bikes and electric cars dropping off deliveries as you will see trucks and white vans. “It’s quicker to get from A to B – and it’s safer.” “You are never stuck in a queue,” says Erlandsson before doing a 360-degree turn in front of a group of amused shoppers. It’s the perfect distribution method in a city putting a brake on heavy traffic. There is double wishbone suspension on the wheels – a technique similar to what you will find on a Formula 1 car – making it ideal for navigating tram tracks and cobblestones when Erlandsson and his delivery company ferry lunches, cakes and wine to local offices. Stretching 14ft long but only 34 inches wide, the sleek machine is crafted from red-coated aluminium with a pedal-assisted electric drive and a trailer that is low enough for other cyclists to look over. “I call it the rolling deckchair,” says Johan Erlandsson as his six-wheeled cargo bike, the Velove Armadillo, glides down the cobbled pedestrian streets of central Gothenburg. The Swedish city’s Stadsleveransen system pools deliveries for 500 shops and businesses – drastically reducing shopping centre traffic and freeing up once-congested streets for pedestrians and cyclists.
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