by Walther Ploos van Amstel
Amsterdam wants to turn the clock back 150 years. The canals, once the city’s economic lifelines, are being repositioned as arteries for supplying leisure venues and retail in the inner city. After years of pilot projects, a commercial freight boat service has now started operating between the Westelijk Havengebied and the city centre, including the …
Ten years ago, I gave up my car. It was the best decision I ever made. Public transport, taxis, walking, cycling. In a small city like Amsterdam, you can go a long way without owning a vehicle. I rent a car only when absolutely necessary, four to six times a year. Often it is inconvenient, …
Amsterdam maps the business case for waterborne urban logistics: it is not automatically a ‘no-regret’ option. The City of Amsterdam has been exploring for several years whether water transport can play a larger role in urban logistics. A recent exploratory cost–benefit analysis compared the societal and financial impacts of waterborne transport with road transport and …
The four largest Dutch cities are working on a covenant with parcel carriers and e-commerce retailers to gain more control over the rapid growth of parcel lockers and pickup points. Dutch newspaper FD reported this today. The trigger is the explosive increase in parcel lockers while municipalities still lack clear spatial planning policies. At the …
Municipalities often assume that introducing or expanding a zero-emission zone (ZE zone) will be enough to decarbonize urban logistics. The reality is more complex. According to the latest figures from the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), more than 50,000 electric light commercial vehicles (LCVs) are currently on the road in the Netherlands. Yet adoption is far …
In 2023, the United Nations General Assembly declared the first-ever UN Decade of Sustainable Transport, starting in 2026. This Decade marks a rare political moment in which transport is explicitly recognised as a critical enabler of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While transport does not have its own standalone SDG, it underpins progress on climate action, …
The European Commission’s report, A practical methodology for implementing circular solutions, offers a concrete, operational framework for turning circular economy ambitions into implementable projects at the city and regional levels. Developed within the Circular Cities and Regions Initiative (CCRI), the methodology directly addresses a recurring challenge in logistics and urban systems: while circular strategies are widely adopted …
Europe’s last-mile parcel delivery system is approaching a structural breaking point. Rapid growth in e-commerce, driven by platforms such as Amazon, Temu, and Shein, combined with the expansion of recommerce via players like Vinted and eBay, and return-intensive fashion flows from Zalando, H&M, and ZARA, is overwhelming traditional door-to-door delivery and parcel shop models. As …
Belgium is experiencing a rapid expansion of parcel locker networks, prompting the Belgian Institute for Postal Services and Telecommunications (BIPT) to launch a public consultation on their future development and regulation. Parcel lockers have grown nearly tenfold in six years: by the end of 2024, Belgium counted 1,684 lockers, up from just over 170 in …
The e-commerce boom has turned last-mile logistics into a permanent feature of urban life: millions of parcels a day, dense networks of depots, and streets full of vans, trucks, and bikes. The report Fast Shipping. Slow Justice shows what that looks like in New York City: more crashes near warehouses, higher pollution in environmental justice …