Fewer delivery drivers and more ticket offices: the new logistics are already being tested in the city.

Delivery vans have become a serious problem for cities. The challenge of pollution does not fit in with a logistics model where every day, thousands of vans move around the cities and park anywhere to meet the number of deliveries that guarantee the viability of the business. While cities have designed formulas to organise the mobility of bicycles, scooters, motorbikes and cars, logistics has remained the latest challenge for administrations, lagging behind a society that has become familiar with online shopping after the pandemic.

Barcelona is one of the cities that is trying to accelerate plans to decarbonise goods, and intends to do so in collaboration with the private sector, with whom it has held talks to establish a municipal strategy for the urban distribution of goods. It sets targets that by 2030, 40% of online purchases and 33% of home and office deliveries should be picked up at local points.

To achieve this, it is committed to extending the so-called “distribution centres”, aimed at consumers, which will be able to deliver around 1,500 packages a day. These will be complemented by other larger centres, made up of shops, which will serve as warehouses for subsequent delivery by sustainable modes of transport. The plan is complemented by an extension of the loading and unloading times, an increase in night-time loading and unloading and a tenfold increase in the number of cycle-transport vehicles, from 80 to 800.

At present, this distribution model is around 8 to 10%, but the plans of Ada Colau’s city council do not have specific dates. What is known is the ultimate goal: to halve polluting emissions. The first sketches of the model involve the installation of lockers in public spaces such as markets or car parks, which will be accompanied by similar formulas to be implemented in private environments.