Four metropolises want to get rid of congestion caused by freight traffic

Did you ever experience? Getting into a big city as Berlin, Stockholm, Warsaw or Katowice may be really annoying. Especially during peak hours. Thousands of commuters heading for their jobs. And there is more and more heavy and light duty vehicles blocking the streets. Couldn't at least they vanish from the streets?

Neglected rail infrastructure, just-in-time and door-to-door

But why they are there? Just-in-time and door-to-door delivery pushed by e-commerce services have been growing tremendously. Rail network capacity in metropolitan regions is limited and rail infrastructure needed for the transshipment from rail to road is scarce.

Making better use of available rail infrastructure for innerurban freight distribution

There is a lot of concepts to improve urban logistics. The UrbFRail idea is to move rail freight hubs closer to the heart of the metropolis by developing urban freight rail hubs. This will shorten the last mile. And it will enable zero emission logistics services like cargo bikes or battery electric vehicles.

An unloved child: rail freight in the city

However, it's not an easy task to develop urban freight rail hubs. Organising logistics is a rather private domain, but cannot be managed without control by the public sector. Changing logistics habits and systems requires processes where both, public and private domain need to engage. And the public administration needs to initiate this process in the common interest.

Supporting public authorities to get started

Within UrbFRail, partners from public and scientific institutions develop tools to support the planning of urban freight rail hubs.
The UrbFRail screening tool allows to assess the general suitability of a specific site to be developed as a freight rail hub.
The UrbFRail development tool provides a structured model process as well as tools, for instance to identify relevant stakeholders and to clarify which information is needed at which stage.