Freight in the City 2018 - clean air over Ally Pally - LSA

LSA followed the green signs for Freight in The City.

Top of the N22 hill, Scania trucks at the front door of the Ally Pally venue, a monster-sized John Lewis double-deck trailer inside; a forum to debate the challenges and explore the opportunities that continue to emerge in the urban logistics sector.

Alex Williams TfL key comment noted the freight plans for the future, Ian Clough DHL and Rob Fowler DPD spoke express delivery and Ben Farrell John Lewis of retail delivery overtaking high street sales.

Latest trucks and vans in the exhibition hall, Renault EV below the Palm Court window, Gnewt volume van electric at the organ end of the Grand Hall. Seminar room had all topics, avoiding PCNs, counter terrorism, all the way to direct vision, it was an exceptional opportunity to bump into chums, network and talk clean air above the London smog of the City and West End. If you did not make it, take a look at the snaps gallery below.

Alex Williams TfL, opened the planning for future seminar, five months to ULEZ.

Alex focused on freight in the capital, innovation, and van numbers. Alex spoke passionately about visiting depots for freight, taking a seat in a five star Tarmac truck at Kings Cross.

Freight is essential. London is a city that is growing, but we need to work with you on safety and clean air, our discussions with you are ongoing.

The A13 is grid-locked. I have visited the electric DPD hub in Westminster. We have done a lot of work on alternative modes including the river and dialogue on the wharfs. We have a lot of dialogue with the industry, we will have a freight report coming for next year. Safety, direct vision standard and other initiatives, vans are stable but HGV serious incident numbers are rising.

The Mayor is passionate about air quality, a public health crisis, nine thousand deaths a year on air quality is unacceptably high.

Population today in London 8.8 million rising to 10.8 by 2041. London will be a mega-city over ten million by 2030. This growth clearly has an impact on freight and the road network. ‘What are we going to do about it?

The Mayor's Transport Strategy is published, points most relevant to freight - 80% mode-share by 2041, Vision Zero no serious accidents on the transport network by 2041, Zero emission by 2050, 10% fewer lorries and vans entering am peak in the congestion zone by 2026.

Rethinking the last mile, Ian Clough DHL

bus lane access for alternative fuel vehicles- consolidating retail clients in the same vehicle. network logistics and transport for Supply Chain, thousands of vehicles and employees on a day-to-day challenge for logistics.

Cities are growing, the challenge is building. 79% UK population is in the cities 92% predicted by 2030. 39.6 million Vehicles on the road.

When Hackney put in restrictions to a couple of roads this was a challenge for the much wider area. We do an impact study regularly, there is a lot of technology coming in and its gaining pace.

We have to adopt to the changing demographics, the way people access retail is changing as is social values. Convenience logistics, the growth in convenience retail, we have had a contract with Morrison’s since 2016 and their area of exponential growth in city centres is convenience retail. People want to collect goods around the corner from where they live.

Noise is a major factor in the cities for logistics operations. Efficient transport planning, vehicle management systems with freight corridors to reduce trips on the road.

Ian spoke about the Avonmouth consolidation centre just outside Bristol.

We maximise utilisation of the vehicles from Avonmouth to deliver in loops into the city. ‘When we begin to use alternative fuel vehicles the council tells us we will get access to bus lanes for better access.

Consolidation the goods; we are looking to use same vehicles for multiple retail clients. This is outside the norm for retail final mile. Reducing movements, re-timing all improve air quality but we need a consistent way to do this across the UK. We need joined up thinking around the whole road network, land planning must give access to logistics for consolidation centres

We need incentives to use alternative fuel, not financial, access for these vehicles will help the impact.

Ben Farrell, John Lewis, head of central operations and transport

Last year we delivered more sales than we sold in our branches.Great to be here not talking about Christmas retail but bringing a story for Oxford Street and our trailer deliveries.There has never been such change in retail, we need to be relevant to our customers, change and adapt and be a retailer where people wish to shop. Last year we delivered more sales than we sold in our branches. We want to do the right thing.

Delivering to Oxford Street has changed little in the history of John Lewis, in 1962 we had our first electric vehicles. We expect in excess of 600,000 unit demands for Black Friday. 54% of all our online sales are click and collect next day, busiest shop point on the clock is 9.32pm but half are returned. We are trying to change the relevance of shopping in Oxford Street, our Oxford street store has a rooftop ice rink for Christmas, we are re-inventing ourselves.

Best efficiency is achieved with purchase in store. Increasing capacity on trailers reduces number of trips to store so we have created an urban double-deck trailer that is on show in the show today at the Transtec stand (see below). We used to get cages in the twenties on a trailer, with this new trailer we have moved to over 50 cages.

We are reducing our activity on the roads, we are doing the right thing.

Rob Fowler DPD, general manager for corporate social responsibility

securing property is the challenge, logistics property cannot compete with residential for land values.

Barking Standard depot delivers 23k parcels a day at full capacity, lots of head count, lots of vehicles but only a few miles from our three-year-old Dagenham DPD depot, Dagenham is full and Barking will be full this peak.

Micro depots are our new solution, low stem miles; our DPD EV hub in Westminster is brand new, Westminster location exclusively serves SW1 postcodes, very local mileage for very local deliveries.

Nissan NV200s are new to the UK, a micro vehicle The Paxster from Norway (see below). The Micro Paxsters are working really well.

Getting the parcels into the micro depots, we use eCanter all-electric trucks to get the parcels into the Westminster micro depot.

Charging solutions, we have a ten-year lease on the Westminster micro hub, we put an intelligent charge system in and it came with a fleet management tool to measure cost of miles in the same way we used to measure diesel cost.

The micro model is an entirely new strategy for us to find a city solution, micro vehicles achieving air quality. Breaking down barriers, we need a mass produced 3.5t oem vehicle. We need to protect and create B8 space in the city for logistics space. We need everyone to work together on infrastructure for charging.

Next week we open DPD micro hub Shoreditch.

The Ally Pally Freight in the City bash appeared to be thin on visitor numbers but we are in peak and there is no shortage of these events, Kempton Park was West London, be sure to visit one near you., It’s Rainham LoCITY next week for the East Londoners.