Effective solutions for green urban transport - CO2-free city logistics

Rotterdam, 12.10.2012

The third workshop of the series "Effective solutions for green urban transport - Learning from CIVITAS cities" took place on Friday 12 October in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

The topic of this workshop was the future of urban freight transport in cities. In its White Paper of 2011, the European Commission stated its ambition to have CO2-free city logistics by 2050. CIVITAS has been an experimental sandbox for new developments in sustainable transport for ten years. This workshops drew on experience with new forms of urban freight transport in CIVITAS cities like Aalborg and Utrecht and shared their discoveries. It showed a glimpse of our future both by sharing those experiences and actively letting participants think about how they can help their city.

Held on the Ship SS Rotterdam in the Port of Rotterdam, the workshop was organised as a side event to the EEAC, RLI Conference "Keep moving, towards sustainable mobility'.

The day before (on 11 October), mobility experts had the possibility to participate in a study tour on Innovative sustainable freight transport in Utrecht. For more information, click here.

The conclusion of the workshop was that only a variety of measures can lead to can lead to carbon free city logistics. Due to the Civitas examples cities can pick and choose which measures will work in their city. The European commission can and will use all the examples and suggestions in their policy development.

The results of the questionnaire show a very good evaluation of the third VANGUARD dissemination workshop. Both content as format are evaluated as good or very good by almost all respondents. 95% of the respondents would recommend this workshop to someone else. For the majority, there was a good balance between theory and practice in the workshop, although 12 % said there was too much theory. Participants gained some insights in CIVITAS and learned from experiences from other cities. Insights gained could generally be useful as input for their own professional situation.
Other key findings:
- Participants are interested in Forum or other events, so important to sponsor these at next workshops
- E-mail contacts were indicated as an important source of information.