Website: www.visionlundby.goteborg.se/foretagGodstrans.html
Case Study (141 Kb PDF)
Summary
Freight cooperation in Lundby was carried out in the rapidly expanding Lundby district, Gothenburg, Sweden 2001-2006, by the Lundby Mobility Centre. It aimed to create more sustainable freight patterns by better transport planning, targeting the end consumers, the SME in the area, by increasing their awareness. The objective was to decrease the transports to the participating companies by 30 percent. The 17 participating companies decreased their transports with 41 percent, exceeding the objective, a decrease of over 500 transports a year. The funding was from Norra Älvstranden Utveckling AB and the EU project TELLUS. Communication methods and channels were crucial for success. Much effort was put into dissemination of the result and experiences from the project.
Results
The objective was to decrease the deliveries of the participating companies with 30 percent. The average decrease was 41 percent which means that the objective was exceeded, despite the fact that the project changed focus from co-loading to optimizing existing transports. The number of transports decreased from in average 101,5 a month to 59,5 transports a month, a decrease with about 500 transports a year. People felt more secure walking in the area, as a result of the decrease of transports vehicles.
The environmental gain of this decrease is however relatively small. The project showed that there is a large potential for environmental results if large part of the companies in an area are participating.
17 companies that are buyers of office products and 5 suppliers of office products participated in the project. It was hard to reach and to engage the companies and much effort was put in developing a communication strategy.
Over 700 companies were contacted, both given invitations to participate in the project, general information about freight cooperation, they received newsletters and an annual survey to study changes over time. It showed that the companies appreciated the contacts form Lundby Mobility Centre and were very positive to an initiative targeting private enterprises. Four seminars were held for the companies. The process has given a good contact between the supplying and the purchasing companies. Due to the increased communication the number of transports has been decreased without any decrease in service. The changes that were needed to reach the result were relatively small which surprised many of the participating companies.
One of the major objectives was to create a model for how to work with freight cooperation. Dissemination activities have therefore been a very important part of the project. Investigations, presentations and media have been used for the dissemination. Some of the dissemination and development activities are listed below:
Lessons learned and repeatability
Today there are no economical advantages for a company to participate in this kind of project. There is a need for further incentives to be able to attract companies to this kind of projects, for example direct economical advantages. It was also hard to activate the suppliers of the project even though they gained economically from the decrease in transports.
The mayor environmental gains do not come until a relatively large share of the companies is participating in the project.
The project showed that the manner of contacting the companies is crucial for success and the development of a communication plan was a key factor for the success of the company. To engage the companies it was important to be able to show good local examples. To get these examples the project recommend to contact companies that are already working with environmental issues, as for example companies with an ISO 14 001 certified environmental management system. One of the success factors for the project was to use existing networks, in this case the organisation for enterprises at Norra Älvstranden, a part of Lundby.
An important lesson learned from the project was that even with small changes for the participating companies it was possible to decrease the number of transports a lot. This can be important to lift in early discussions with companies since many of the participating companies thought that the changes made was going to be much more extensive than they were in the end.
The project may be replicated in any area with a concentration of companies purchasing the same items, for example offices, which means almost any city centre. This might be one of the most interesting areas to repeat the project in since there often is a large need to minimize the number of vehicles and to decrease air pollution.
To find similar reports, click on a keyword below:
Energy Efficiency
: Freight
: Industry
: Information Dissemination
: ManagEnergy
: Mobility Management
: Sustainable Transport
: Transport Companies
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