Dear members and friends of the Open ENLoCC network
In this spring edition of the Review, the handling of goods in urban areas is once again a major topic. Not only “Inner City Logistics”, but also freight transport in greater urban regions, will be addressed. We will also guide you into the state of the art in local and regional planning dealing with these logistics issues!
On urban freight transport we present a major overview on soft sustainable transport policies and measures implemented in European cities in a study made by Open ENLoCC members Tomislav Letnik, Maršenka Marksel, and Stane Božičnik at the University of Maribor FGPA, Slovenia and Giuseppe Luppino and Andrea Bardi from the Institute for Transport and Logistics in Italy. The conclusion is that “Presented case studies of different European cities … have shown that well selected measures and/or their optimal combination can substantially decrease the energy consumption and CO2 footprint.” There is also a comprehensive compilation of recent articles about city logistics and regional logistics collected from the European Transport Research Review, which we outline for reference and recommend to our readers. In the News Section among other things, we report on the loss of the Conro ship “Grande America” ship sinking with a cargo of cars and containers, which may cause long-term environmental problems.
Furthermore, world-wide shipping has really had unwanted regional impact: On January 3, almost 300 containers went overboard a ship in the North Sea. The Review reports the consequences, from the German island of Borkum, which was hit hard, together with the islands of Ameland, Schiermonnikoog and Rottumeroog in the Netherlands. In this issue you will also find a presentation of logistics developments around Open ENLoCC member Logistics in Wallonia, caused by cooperation with Chinese institutions and online trade platform Alibaba. The classic text in this issue was written by a famous British author, Lewis Carroll. It deals with a journey into unknown territory and with unknown goals.
Since the means openly include logistics, and since it also describes human behaviour in general, we thought it fit for presentation to our readers. The spring issue also reports an unusual number of relevant next dates. Electro mobility, urban delivery and urban planning for logistics are, not surprisingly, becoming increasingly focused topics. We wish you all good “spring logistics” reading!
Carl-Magnus Carlsson Malmö University Co-Editor