The logistics sector, merchants and the City of Mechelen signed a covenant "sustainable and efficient city logistics" on Friday. The eight-point plan lists agreements and concrete actions. It targets city distribution with zero emissions by 2030.
In Mechelen, 10% of traffic is freight. The Technum study firm calculated in 2015 that the downtown area has 7,587 deliveries to process per week. That accounts for 4,598 transport movements per week. This includes not only deliveries to trade, the hospitality industry and businesses (b2b deliveries) but also deliveries directly to consumers (b2c deliveries). These are growing exponentially.
The city has therefore drawn up a sustainable logistics plan through which it intends to reduce the number of transport movements and miles driven. Combined with a greening of vehicles, it aims to achieve zero emission urban distribution by 2030. In doing so, a roadmap has been drawn up: in 2023, 20% of deliveries must be carried out with zero-emission vehicles, in 2027 50% and in 2030 100%.
Mechelen was the first Belgian city to sign a covenant with 29 logistics companies and the Mechelen merchants. This lays down the agreements to achieve that goal. For the various parties, it is a concrete commitment to comply with them as correctly as possible. So it goes beyond a non-committal consultation and stated intentions.
The covenant has provisionally been drawn up for goods flows related to urban distribution. This means that construction logistics, waste logistics and service flows (such as value transports) are not currently included in the covenant.
Dematra wishes to do its part in this by bundling goods as much as possible and investigating the possibility of purchasing an electric truck for delivery.
The plan envisions 8 action areas:
