Sustainable Elba Logistics Plan

Summary

Elba Island is characterised by high levels of vehicular traffic, made up of both commercial and private vehicles, especially during the peak tourist season. This measure aimed to improve the quality of the residents’ and tourists’ life as well as the environmental conditions, by developing a Sustainable Urban Logistics Plan - a policy framework for sustainable freight transport on the island.

Implementing sustainable mobility

The realisation of the Sustainable Elba Logistics Plan (SULP) started with the definition of a common normative framework for all the Elba municipalities and the identification of specific solutions for freight consolidation and delivery.

The drafting of the SULP followed these steps:

• Identification of the logistics baseline and the common objectives;
• Analysis of the users' needs and identification of the best solutions for freight consolidation on the mainland and freight delivery on the island;
• Stakeholder engagement through discussion sessions;
• Definition of the service’s conditions, organisation, and the related costs;
• Definition of a common normative framework, focused on the commercial vehicles’ access regulations in the island’s urban areas, particularly during the summer season;
• Evaluation of the economic and environmental impact of the plan.

The methodology adopted for drafting the document is a best practice developed within the IEE Project Enclose, coordinated by MemEx, also a technical partner of CIVITAS DESTINATIONS. It envisages strong cooperation among the different stakeholders and policymakers, with a bottom-up approach based on users’ needs and cities’ objectives.

Consequently, the SULP is a detailed analysis of the various features of goods distribution on the entire island, as well as a strategic document that also suggests new solutions and sustainable initiatives to solve the freight transport’s issues. It does this by trying to rationalise commercial vehicular traffic and improve the island’s accessibility.

Methodology guidelines for drafting the SULP

The SULP strategy is mainly based on the following actions:

• Using technology for logistics optimisation;
• Encouraging operators to adopt good practices (i.e., use of low-emission vehicles);
• Harmonising urban access legislation among the municipalities on the island.

An important action envisaged by the SULP is the use of temporary goods storage centres, both on the mainland and on the island. In this way, it is possible to optimise ‘last-mile’ transportation by contracting an operator working at full load on behalf of third parties.

Connection to other measures

The drafting of SULP is deeply connected with two other project measures, namely the goods delivery service pilot, realised for Ho.Re.Ca and tourists’ benefit, and the drafting of the common Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) for the whole of Elba Island.

Outcomes

Positive collaboration between political stakeholders

Portoferraio and Rio actively collaborated to develop the SULP and they are confident about its positive impact on the planning and management of the island’s logistics patterns.

Engagement of stakeholders

Transport operators actively participated in the implementation phase of the measure.

Realisation of the SULP

Thanks to the collaboration the expertise of the technical partner MemEx, the Elba SULP was drafted in 2019.

Next steps

The SULP must be approved by all the seven municipalities of the island, after which the suggested freight transport solutions may be implemented on the territory. Therefore, the assessment of the measure can only be carried out after the realisation of the recommendations indicated within the SULP itself.