The movement of goods in urban areas is well organised by private companies whilst recently European municipalities have started to develop policies to change urban transport towards sustainable solutions. In this area of tension between established traditional transport structures and the objectives of cleaner, safer and more attractive Cities there are many innovations taking place European wide. BESTUFS II (Best Urban Freight Solutions II) is a Co-ordination Action (CA) within the 6th FP and aims to increase the awareness of urban freight transport best practice for all those actors involved in its functioning and to stimulate innovative solutions that will enhance its sustainability in the urban area. Furthermore, it seeks to foster co-operation between domain experts, research institutions, urban transport operators and city administrations in order to encourage the identification and dissemination of City Logistic Solutions (CLS) that are considered as best practice both within Europe and other parts of the world. BESTUFS II is a follow-up initiative of the successful BESTUFS project and aims to maintain and broaden the existing BESTUFS network including medium sized urban areas in EU 25. BESTUFS organizes regular Best Practice workshops that highlight recent innovative examples and present main development directions and common problems faced as seen by transport operators, public bodies, retailers and domain experts. Examples on BESTUFS Best Practices are given for Last Mile solutions, waste logistics, urban consolidation centers and many more. It is the intention of BESTUFS II to produce a series of CLS best practice guides based on information documented in the handbooks of BESTUFS and BESTUFS II. As there is to state a language barrier limiting especially authorities of smaller cities from learning from other European cities experiences BESTUFS II will translate the Best Practice guides into 16 national languages. Therewith the guides will be used as base material to disseminate CLS information to stakeholders of urban freight transport activities especially in smaller urban areas. An important action in the dissemination process will be the organisation of seminars in national languages, which aim to establish a knowledge bridge for the exchange of relevant information and experiences between the EU and national local levels. Furthermore, BESTUFS II will describe the urban freight context and the role urban freight transport play in a city by quantifying freight transport related processes and measures. A group of experts is addressing issues on common data models, practical modeling tools and application fields in more detail within roundtables and prepare suggestions for a European harmonisation and roadmap. The 8 main contractors together with 16 subcontractors guarantee a full EU 25 coverage and tracking of developments taking place in the urban freight domain. BESTUFS II started in September 2004 with a duration of 4 years. Only abstract (as above) is available from the conference proceedings. For the covering abstract of the conference see ITRD E212343.
Samenvatting