Athens

Greece

Context

The Region of Attica is the first in population and the most densely populated region of Greece, since it contains the urban complex of Athens, which is the capital of Greece, bringing together 1/3 of the population of the country, thus 3,761,810 3 million inhabitants according to the 2011 census. About 3,750,000 people live in the area, of which more than 95% are residents of the metropolitan area of Athens.

Despite the recent negative withdraws regarding the economic and social obstacles, Athens is constantly tackling every new upcoming challenge, transforms itself in order to absorb all recent changes and tries to adopt the new conditions as a dynamic and evolving community. Under that dimension, Athens will keep working on further improvement and extroversion.

Moreover, there are large scale infrastructure developments and redesign works in progress, such as expanding the subway infrastructure, replacing main streets with pedestrian streets in the historic city center and new investment initiatives.

Within this context, the Athens Living Lab aims to establish multistakeholder collaborations which starting from the cooperation among the ACS Postal Services (ACS), the FedEx and the IT Company of the City of Athens (DAEM), will be further expanded to a wide network of logistics service providers and local stakeholders, businesses, etc. The Living Lab will identify optimal places for deploying micro-consolidation centres (MCCs) in public places, that will be jointly used by the courier companies in order to introduce and extend the use of cargo -bikes and EVs.

THE CHALLENGE

Nevertheless, for the last decade, Athens has been undergoing rapid social change driven by migrant waves and digital nomads who seek to relocate to the area affecting all areas of urban living and logistics chains. In addition, the COVID-19 crisis has had a severe impact on urban logistics as in 2020 alone e-commerce transactions increased by over 42% in Greece, the majority of which were fulfilled in the Athens area.

Besides perishable goods, online purchases of groceries and take away food followed similar growth. In this landscape, the major courier companies are planning significant investments to cope with the increased demand, as the expectations are that despite the spike of demand due to COVID-19 lockdown, consumer habits have irreversibly been affected towards online purchases.

Such investments need to be directed at sustainable solutions for last-mile deliveries and consider sustainability factors for improving Athens’ inhabitants’ quality of life and mitigate the effects on the already congested transport network of the city.

GREEN-LOG INNOVATION

The aim was to establish a network of logistics service providers, local stakeholders, businesses etc. so as to implement MCCs in public places jointly used by the courier companies. Also, a latter objective was to introduce and extend the use of cargo-bikes and Electric Vehicles (EVs).

Thus, a coordinated effort was needed in order to open communication channels between logistics service providers, public officials, businesses and citizens for the effective design of such solutions, provided by GREEN-LOG.

The demonstration took place in the historic center of Athens, which according to the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) of Athens issued in April 2021, aimed at becoming a Limited Traffic Zone (LTZ). In the LTZ, the passage of vehicular traffic is prohibited, except for taxis, public transportation and small delivery vehicles.

The pilot tested a collaborative last-mile delivery model involving ACS and FedEx. The solution used a Micro-Consolidation Centre, shared electric vehicles, parcel lockers, and digital coordination through the GREEN-LOG Dataspace, Digital Control Tower, and BYOD execution layer.

Results showed reductions in urban distance travelled and delivery tour duration compared with baseline operations. The pilot also demonstrated that competing logistics operators can coordinate and share selected operational data without exposing commercially sensitive information.

Relevant outputs

Some of the most notable outputs are:

Novel business models that enhance the symbiosis of the different stakeholders,
Residents’ and customers’ preferences for alternative green last mile deliveries,
Local Living Lab co-design activities and deployment of a white-label schemes for picking up/delivering parcels,
Setting up a transparent marketplace connected to zero emissions delivery services.