Cities want to steer city logistics. Zero-emission zones, traffic filters, loading bays, construction logistics: the policy ambitions are big. But there is one awkward problem. Cities barely know what is actually happening on their streets. While passenger mobility has been monitored for decades with traffic models, smart card data and parking permits, freight and service traffic has remained a blind spot. Policy is therefore made on assumptions, wishful thinking and negotiation — not on facts.
The Weesperstraat pilot in Amsterdam showed how painful that is. When the street was temporarily closed, researchers from VU Amsterdam and the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences tried to map the impact on city logistics. It failed. Nine companies were asked for trip data; only one carrier could deliver usable information. Ninety trips, one company, collected during the summer holidays. An intervention with potentially major logistics effects could not be properly evaluated. And the Weesperstraat is no exception: with zero-emission zones, curb management and circular logistics, cities steer largely blind.
Why is the data missing?
Three mechanisms make city logistics data so hard to get. First, fragmentation: shippers, carriers, couriers, and platforms each see only a slice of the chain, and their data sits in systems that do not talk to one another. Second, asymmetry of interests: companies own the operational data but have little incentive to share it; municipalities hold area and regulatory data but have no visibility into operations. Third, administrative uncertainty: policymakers fear privacy and competition law, companies fear commercial disclosure, residents fear surveillance. The result is a policy field that is both policy-hungry and information-poor.
First question: data for which decision?
Before collecting anything, cities must ask what the data is for.
Strategic decisions — hub locations, charging infrastructure, zero-emission zones, low-traffic neighborhoods — need aggregated forecasts of volumes, vehicle kilometers and emissions with a 10-to-20-year horizon.
Tactical decisions — time windows, loading regimes, enforcement priorities — need time profiles, stop durations and compliance data.
Operational steering — dynamic routing, curb reservation, traffic management during events — needs real-time data. Each level demands different information. One-size-fits-all data platforms miss that point.
What track-and-trace data can deliver
A CBS pilot for the VESDI platform shows what is possible. Between late 2023 and early 2025, 102 small companies shared track-and-trace data from 107 delivery vans: 18,940 trips and 743 thousand kilometers. The findings are telling. A van makes on average 7.4 trips a day over 89 kilometers. Only 18 percent of trips touched a zero-emission zone, and a mere 0.7 percent of kilometers were driven inside one. More than half of all stops lasted less than ten minutes. And the closer a vehicle’s home base is to a ZE zone, the more trips enter it: 70 percent for vehicles based inside the zone, dropping to 7 percent beyond ten kilometers.
But the pilot also exposed the bottlenecks. Response stayed far below target, small companies were hard to mobilize, data arrived in 40 different formats, and software suppliers were reluctant to share for privacy reasons. Construction was well represented; other sectors barely.
Governance, not technology
The technical basis exists — the CBS case proves it. The real challenge is governance: trust, standardization, legal certainty and clear agreements on access. Treat city logistics data as infrastructure, not as a project. Design pilots as data generators. Build B2G data coalitions with tiered access. And invest in data capability at municipalities.
The Expert Group on Urban Mobility emphasises that data exchange enables smarter city logistics, but also brings complex challenges. Urban freight traffic affects congestion, emissions, safety and use of space, but logistics data remains fragmented. Governments manage regulation and infrastructure, while companies record trips, vehicle data and loading patterns. Without combining these perspectives, cities design policy without foundations. Data answers crucial questions about microhub locations, traffic flows, bottlenecks and charging infrastructure.
Data-driven city logistics is not a technological innovation but an institutional one. Cities that keep steering on assumptions will keep being surprised by the outcomes. The holy grail is within reach, but only for cities willing to organize for it.
Based on a paper by Mathijs Jacobs (CBS) and Walther Ploos van Amstel (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences).
Also read: Data Sharing: The Missing Link in Zero-Emission City Logistics