Project overview
The CITYLAB project (completed in April 2018) adopted living lab methods (joint stakeholder co-operation and innovation) to test various freight initiatives in the cities of Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Paris, Oslo, Rome and Southampton.
In Southampton, the overriding objective was to improve air quality along key transport corridors, with the main focus on large municipal organisations such as Southampton General Hospital, Southampton City Council and Southampton’s two universities to investigate opportunities for joint procurement and consolidation of goods to reduce environmental impacts.
The Southampton Sustainable Distribution Centre at Nursling, operated by project partner Meachers Global Logistics, offered a consolidation service, with take-up from the hospital for temporary storage and transportation of automated dispensing units and planning for consolidation of pharmacy goods transport.
Consolidations of items delivered to student halls of residence were investigated in case studies although not implemented.
CITYLAB partner Southampton City Council contributed to air quality concerns by initiating plans to switch a significant proportion of its own-operated vehicle fleet to electric vehicles, and the first six vehicles arrived in January 2018.
Further information is available on the legacy project website
