START - Short-Term Actions to Re-organise Transport of goods
Overview
Background & policy context:
As it has been clearly shown in the Green Paper on Energy Efficiency, that progress to improve energy efficiency in the transport sector is vital. Policy measures can provide incentives for technical advances. The first step was the adoption of an EU strategy on CO2 and cars with the aim of using consumer information and voluntary agreements to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars. The voluntary agreements between the Commission and the European, Japanese and Korean vehicle manufacturers aim to reduce the average CO2 emissions of new cars by 25%, to 140 grams per kilometre, by 2008 (2009 for the Korean manufacturers), compared to the 1995 baseline.
Significant scope exists in many other areas, e.g. load factor, mode shift and transport avoidance, for action to improve energy use in transport.
Complementary to the long-term planning of reducing need of transport, the cities within the START project (Bristol, Göteborg, Ljubljana, Ravenna and Riga) takes a short term approach and combine actions such as access restrictions, consolidation centres and incentives. These measures will benefit both businesses and citizens by making goods distribution more energy efficient and hence reducing the related air pollution.
Objectives:
The overall goal of START is to reduce energy use by making the freight traffic in the cities more efficient, by consolidation of deliveries, improved load factors and greater use of more energy efficient vehicles.
The START high level objectives are:
- A reduction of energy use by freight traffic in the demonstration areas by 10%.
- A reduction of CO2 (minus 7%), NOx (minus 10%) and PM10 (minus 15%) emissions by freight traffic in the demonstration areas.
- Increased awareness and acceptance from the local transport sectors about the possible ways to increase energy and economic efficiency of freight transport.
- Increased public private co-operation.
- Increased transnational exchange of experience among the stakeholders on freight transport in European cities.
- The high level objectives will be reached without hindering the economic development in the demonstration areas.
The START cities will develop regulations for new and expanded restricted areas and implement these area restrictions. In addition, the START cities will implement consolidation schemes in new areas and with new participants. A business model will be developed and additional services will be implemented. A complete programme of incentives will be implemented directed at raising awareness among freight companies about energy efficiency and to stimulate more sustainable behaviour by promoting the introduction of clean vehicles (CNG and Bio-fuels), developing "extras" (e.g. free use of loading bays, permission to use public transport lanes, …) for clean vehicles and trucks with a high load rate, and promoting and training drivers for eco-driving and maintenance of vehicles.
As part of START the city of Bristol will look to introduce access control and priority measures which improve efficiency whilst minimising the impact of freight movements in conjunction with the redevelopment of the core shopping area. It is planned to further develop the freight consolidation scheme through offering value added services to retailers such as remote warehousing and waste/packaging collection and integrating the scheme with new retail development. Through the local freight network an incentives package of training and guidance to improve fleet efficiency will be offered as well as safe and efficient driver training.
The city of Göteborg will further develop areas within t
Methodology:
The START approach is based on close collaboration between public and private partners. It is a combination of positive incentives, more coercive regulations and enhanced logistics.
Over 75 stakeholder organisations will be involved in the local freight networks. More than 150 companies will be directly involved in the local measures. Dissemination actions will be directed to over 300 European cities and more than 4000 local business and hauler companies. The project will be carried out in four front running European cities: Göteborg, Bristol, Ravenna and Riga, and the follower city Ljubljana. Exchange of experience between the different stakeholders is organized in a structured way through thematic workshops, public European events for stakeholders, demonstrator fact sheets and evaluation results.
Recognizing the importance of the co-operation with and the acceptance of the freight and business sector, the START project is based on Local Freight Networks, which are a formalised form of co-operation between all stakeholders involved in the local freight sector. The local freight networks will be responsible for establishing a detailed planning for the integrated package of demonstration measures and will have periodic meetings to discuss progress, dissemination and evaluation activities. By developing and evaluating policies and measures in cooperation with the stakeholders, awareness and acceptance is safeguarded. The demonstration measures are organized in three thematic work packages on access restrictions, consolidation centres and incentives.
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