A kick-off event on March 1, 2018 launched the CO2-free parcel delivery in the town of Bad Doberan. The Courier-Express-Parcel (CEP)-service UPS will now deliver the parcels in the inner city of Bad Doberan with an electric cargo bike. In a micro-depot on the outskirts, the parcels are reloaded on the cargo bike and then delivered. The CEP-service DPD will now provide an emission-free delivery in the inner city of Bad Doberan with hand trucks. The vans stop in the outskirts and the three suppliers deliver the parcels on foot.
Especially in the summer, the tourism-dominated health-resort Bad Doberan suffers from high traffic load. Congested narrow streets and a pedestrian area right through the inner city make parcel delivery difficult for CEP-services. With the new model of delivery, parcel services hope for a more flexible and efficient delivery. The cargo bike has a capacity of 2 m3, has space for a standard Euro-pallet and is equipped with an assisted electric motor. UPS-courier Matthias Pomplun is looking forward to the new task: “I wanted to do more sport this year anyway.” The used hand trucks from DPD have a weight capacity of 250 kg. Parcel-courier Siegfried Maaß does not believe that he will lose much time on foot because the time-consuming search for a parking space is eliminated. In the end, the town will also benefit from environmentally friendly means of transport, according to Bad Doberan’s mayor Thorsten Semrau.
Bad Doberan is one of five model cities in the EU project Low Carbon Logistics and is managed by the Competence Center for Rural Mobility. The joint objective of the project is to investigate, test and implement solutions to reduce the freight transports, and exchange cross-border expertise knowledge as well as experiences and lessons learned. The implementation will be located in the five South Baltic regions for smarter and more environmentally friendly transport services.
The next step for Low Carbon Logistics is to extend the delivery of the parcels to other areas of Bad Doberan as well as to expand the micro-depot concept to the nearby Hanseatic city of Rostock. It is expected that more CEP-services will participate in the pilot project.
