UrbFRail presented tools for planning inner-urban freight rail hubs

The online Expert Workshop, moderated by Anna Björkman, Lindholmen Science Park, gathered about 60 participants from Norway, Sweden, Germany and Poland. Representing mainly public administration and academia, participants were working at least partially on rail freight issues in their day-to-day business.

In his introduction, Dr. Julius Menge, Berlin Senate Department for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection, and the Environment underlined the importance of inner-urban rail freight hubs for metropoles such as Berlin, Stockholm, Warsaw or Upper Silesia. Developing freight rail hubs close to the heart of the metropolis gets rail freight closer to the end customer and reliefs the transport system from heavy duty transport.
Based on practical experience in Stockholm and Berlin, he and Ludvig Elgström, Swedish Transport Administration pointed towards the challenges, coming with such a concept: an often neglected infrastructure, heavy competition for space, incompatibility with nearby noise-sensitive housing and the need to develop a business model working for private operators.

Maciej Śmieszek, Warsaw University of Technology and Steve Danesch, Berlin Senate Department for Mobility, Transport, Climate Protection and the Environment presented tools developed by the UrbFRail partners to support urban and transport planners with the development of inner-urban freight rail hubs.

The UrbFRail Screening Tool enables to identify and assess potential locations for their suitability to become a freight rail hub. Guided by a set of questions, users provide relevant information, allowing the tool to calculate a suitability score.

The UrbFRail development Tool provides guidance on the development process itself, structuring it into phases, explaining important steps and giving practical advice, for example on how to set-up a stakeholder environment.

All partners highlighted the value of collaboration within the project, allowing to evaluate own processes and to advance the dialogue with local stakeholders. The necessity to involve the right stakeholders to be plan the process iteratively was strongly emphasized. Both tools are available at the jointly developed UrbFRail Learning Platform, providing additional video tutorials and information.

In their concluding remarks, Victoria Herslöf, City of Stockholm, Marcin Domański, Metropolia GZM, Dr. Andrzej Kochan, Warsaw University of Technology and Dr. Julius Menge emphasized the need for public-private collaboration and knowledge sharing, highlighted the role of freight rail for sustainable urban logistics, called for further research into rail freight automation and organization and stressed the importance of expanding discussions to a European level.

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