One of the challenges in greening transportation is in improving distribution systems for local freight. With the trend towards centralised warehouses and fewer but bigger shopping centres, transport is getting less efficient for the sake of "cleaner" distribution processes. Each individual business, such as Woolworths and other big distributors, will optimise its own distribution chain, but this is repeated for every other business so that overall there is more traffic. And more of the transport requirement is being placed on the final consumer, who must drive farther to get to the shops.
Amsterdam recently repurposed an old technology to make a dramatic change to the distribution of goods by sharing facilities among businesses and using less polluting technologies. A new inner city distribution system consists of freight trams that will carry goods in and out of the city on existing tram lines, and electrically powered vans ('e-cars'). The vehicles work with a docking centre that accepts goods from customers that need to deliver to the city, and one company prepares the goods for distribution on the new system.
Startup company CityCargo hopes to reduce the deliveries made by 2,500 trucks that enter Amsterdam daily. The system allows for greater flexibility without the negative impacts of truck traffic, as the new system allows smaller deliveries throughout the day, while the City restricts regular truck traffic to cretain hours to reduce traffic congestion and pollution.
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