For more than 20 years, Frédéric FOURNIER has imagined and designed vehicles for his customers, industrial, agricultural and public works vehicles but also electric vehicles for professional use for example.
From 2016, Frédéric FOURNIER wanted to use his experience for a personal project and also make his contribution to environmental protection.
It was quickly the mobility sector that caught its attention to the extent that it can highlight real expertise.
After an initial opportunity study targeting the transport of people, it was ultimately the transport of goods which was undergoing rapid change that he wanted to invest.
Since 2016, with the help of Bruno DURAND from CERELUEC at the University of NANTES, he has detected real opportunities to be seized in the urban logistics activity of the last KM.
Need for mobility
In the context of city management, it is a question of putting into perspective the issues of coherence between town planning and mobility on an increasingly spread out urban territory taking into account urban renewal but also new urbanizations.
This mobility must be supported by high-performance networks, integrating exchange hubs in a multimodal approach favoring the most relevant mode of transport depending on the context, peri-urban, urban and hyper-center.
Urban logistics is a strong component of mobility in cities. Every day, several thousand deliveries are made across urban areas.
Demand is growing with +5 % deliveries on average per year. Added to this is the impressive growth in parcel/express activity linked to e-commerce, with the number of parcels delivered expected to triple by 2025.
Thus, as with the movement of people, the mobility of goods must be facilitated to maintain economic attractiveness and to reduce its impact on congestion and the environment. It must be taken into account upstream of urban and economic projects.
Urban logistics facing new challenges
The transport of goods in the city represents a growing challenge in economic, environmental, societal and urban planning terms.
Urban logistics today faces several major challenges:
- logistics platforms increasingly distant from city centers
- very significant increase in the volume of deliveries intended for professionals and individuals
- new consumption patterns, e-commerce purchases, catering, etc.
- multiplication of vehicles dedicated to logistics impacting city center pollution (30 %)
- operator margins being reduced and weakening businesses
- significant increase in accidents impacting operators and passers-by
- delivery workers under constant pressure
- low-valued delivery driver job...
Today in the organization of urban logistics we still remain in a logic of “always more and ever faster ": more infrastructure in urban centers, ever more shortages, ever more vehicles...
The result of this headlong rush is clear:
- sharp increase in pollution levels
- increase in logistics costs (additional cost of the last hundred meters)
- multiplication of accidents, operators but also more and more pedestrians, cyclists
Faced with this observation, to continue to develop, the city must progress towards new solutions that are more responsible for the environment and city center users.
It is time to move from imposed logistics to accepted logistics serving city center users.
The action of cities
Cities must ensure the sustainability of the supply of goods and guarantee the effectiveness of local urban logistics in a peaceful city center. As such, pollution levels must be reduced and traffic made more fluid to ensure the mobility of city center users. This is why the metropolises have all committed to ambitious projects aimed at better organizing urban logistics in their territories:
- reduce the number of vehicles and favor capacity vehicles
- limit the movement of delivery vehicles in the city center
- favor non-polluting vehicles, electric CNG and Bio ethanol, hydrogen
- extend delivery times
- develop an ambitious policy on better use of parking and delivery spaces (day/night)
- promote shared logistics in multi-shipper mode
The CITYPROGRESS solution
CITYPROGRESS offers an innovative urban logistics organization of goods flows intended primarily for city center professionals with reasoned use of targeted mobile means and without having to resort to city center infrastructure.
CITYPROGRESS targets the delivery of goods packaged on pallets and Rolls. The challenge is to advance logistics towards new practices that are more sustainable, in compliance with the peoples' security by guaranteeing carriers better profitability.
CITYPROGRESS offers multimodal logistics that separates functions:
- mass transport between the platforms and the city center: use of a non-polluting heavy road vehicle
- city center distribution: use of a specific electric-powered vehicle
The CITYPROGRESS solution has four objectives:
- reduce GHG emissions and, more broadly, pollution in city centers
- improve the level of safety for operators and passers-by
- increase performance by acting on delivery time
- promote the development of shared logistics in multi-shipper mode
Through its concept of the mobile warehouse CITYPROGRESS introduces two major innovations:
- organizational innovation – cost differentiation
- innovation of means – differentiation through performance
CITYPROGRESS separates the delivery function from the transport function. It introduces new logistics with delivery frequencies adapted to demands. The heavy goods vehicle with a maximum length of 12 M transports the goods (12 pallets 800 x 1200 for a maximum payload of 17 T) from the remote logistics platforms, and parks itself at the edge of the delivery perimeter where it then fulfills the function temporary storage for which it benefits from a longer time slot (with municipal authorization) than in the city center.
The delivery vehicle collects the goods (2 Europe pallets for a maximum payload of 700 kg), transports them around the city center (800 M radius) and deposits them as close as possible to the final delivery location. . All load break, transport and grounding functions are directly integrated into the vehicle and avoid the need for other external means (tail lifts, stackers, cranes, etc.)
CITYPROGRESS makes it possible to remove the major obstacle to urban goods logistics by limiting the number of vehicles used compared to current practices which increase the use of LCVs and heavy goods vehicles, whose loads are not optimized, which must move and park in the city center, a place where traffic and delivery area capacities are limited
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