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 LL 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 is 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 to 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 is 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 is to introduce and extend the use of cargo-bikes and Electric Vehicles (EVs).

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

The demonstration will take place in the historic center of Athens, which according to the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan (SUMP) of Athens issued in April 2021, aimed to become 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 solution aims at exploring and demonstrating:

Multistakeholder partnerships,
Design,
Deployment and use of open shared MCCs, logistics hubs and white label schemes to pick up/deliver parcels with cargo-bike, electrically assisted bikes and electric vehicles.

Public spaces including parking lots will be provided by the municipality and used as shared consolidation points realising the concept of logistics hotels.

Context

The Athens Living Lab, beyond the orchestration of the solutions, will investigate the causal relationships in order to understand how they can be combined to create collaborations and generate a positive impact for both private and public-sector stakeholders.

Some of the most notable outputs will be:

Focusing on Athens’ SUMP the implementation of the set of the solutions will lead to:

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.

Focusing on Athens’ SUMP the implementation of the set of the solutions will lead to:

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.