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Wiener Linien test climate-friendly parcel delivery with cargo bikes

Research project RemiHub uses public transport garages for urban logistics Bus and tram garages as transit point ...

photograph RemiHub

© Wiener Linien

A delivery man working for the RemiHub project.

Research project RemiHub uses public transport garages for urban logistics

Bus and tram garages as transit point for parcel delivery staff with environmentally friendly cargo bikes to reduce the number of trucks in the city centre - this is the aim of a joint research project by tbw research, the Technische Universität Wien and the Wiener Linien

"En route to becoming a model climate city, the public transport system is of course the central player, but we must also think about delivery traffic. Online trade is booming and that naturally results in an increase of truck traffic. We want to promote a climate-friendly parcel delivery in our city and the use of bus and tram garages that are not used during the day offers a good approach", says Environment City Councillor Ulli Sima. It is a fact that many parcel delivery locations are outside the city, the distances are often too long for cargo bikes and therefore they are delivered by truck. After a successful first test run with a catering company in autumn 2019, the second test run in cooperation with the parcel delivery service provider DPD commenced.

How it works

In the morning DPD delivers the packages to the bus garage Spetterbrücke in Ottakring. A driver from the company Heavy Pedals picks up the parcels with a cargo bike, sorts them efficiently according to the planned route into the bike container and delivers them to the final customers.

"Our cargo bikes have many advantages: they run silently, emit no climate-damaging CO2 and take up little space in city traffic. The first two test runs on Wiener Linien premises went really well. For the future, we hope that many micro-hubs will be implemented in Vienna", says Florian Weber, Managing Director of Heavy Pedals.

"We not only want to bring the Viennese to their destination in a climate-friendly way, but also help to make freight transport more CO2-friendly. The first test runs show that the cooperation with the different project partners works well and is promising. We can certainly imagine an expansion of the project," says Günter Steinbauer, Managing Director of Wiener Linien, happily.

"As the largest private parcel service provider in Austria, we are constantly looking for innovative delivery concepts. Since 2016, we have been operating our own City Hub in Aspern, from which the parcels are delivered by cargo bicycles to Seestadt. Therefore we are all the more pleased to be able to participate in the RemiHub project to help design further solutions for the urban logistics structure. Urban freight areas are rare, so we support the idea of using public garages as a hub for parcel delivery and are extremely satisfied with the test run," says Daniel Neumann, Managing Director of Gebrüder Weiss Paketdienst GmbH, the largest shareholder of DPD in Austria.

About the RemiHub research project
In November 2019, the RemiHub research project started in the tram remise Kagran in Attemsgasse. It was investigated how central public areas can be used for urban parcel delivery in the future. In the first test run in November 2019, food was delivered to kindergartens and schools from the tram remise. In the second test run, parcels were distributed in cooperation with DPD from the Ottakring bus garage. The obtained data are now to be evaluated by the TU Wien together with the project initiator tbw research in order to derive further measures.

The video of the test run can be watched on our YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/1KsCEKrvrOs, opens an external URL in a new window

Website of the project: RemiHub, opens an external URL in a new window

Article orf.at, opens an external URL in a new window

http://www.wienerlinien.at, opens an external URL in a new window

[Last updated: 2020-05-04]