FRANKFURT: Bicycles, electric cars and public transport might be a sustainable form of transport for the average commuter, but what about freight and packages that need delivering?
Do we need to assume that diesel delivery vans and freight trucks will remain a normality in cities if we want our goods delivered as usual?
One German city has other plans, and is looking into the combined use of trams and cargo bikes as an alternative.
The financial hub of Frankfurt is hoping to use containers carried by freight trams and loaded onto cargo bikes to enable goods to find their way through the city in a low-emission and space-saving way.
Not only could the city's carbon footprint and fine particle pollution be reduced in this way, but also urban congestion.
While battery-supported cargo bikes are becoming increasingly common in cities around the world, the combination of freight tram and cargo bike for urban deliveries is rare at best.
"We hope that we can also shift traffic in this way," said transport official Silke Hoehn from the Frankfurter Verkehrsgesellschaft (VGF), presenting the plans at the opening of the National Cycle Logistics Conference here on Tuesday.
The containers with a capacity of 2.1 cubic metres and a length of 1.7 metres fit into the multi-purpose area of trams and are the size of the standard Euro pallets used for deliveries in countries around the world.
After being transported by tram, the containers on wheels are to be picked up at usual stops by a cargo bike courier. The cyclists can then deliver the goods straight to businesses and households.
The idea of the freight tram is far from new, explains Kai-Oliver Schocke, professor of logistics at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences.
"The tracks of trams were also used for freight transport until the sixties." Around 20 years ago, the idea of freight trams came up again, the expert says. Only now, against the backdrop of climate changed and crowded cities, has the concept gained enough relevance to move to the next level.
It's also not just freight being considered. Mail delivery by freight tram and cargo bike in cooperation with the city and a parcel delivery company is also being trialled in Frankfurt.
According to Schocke, the concept is also being tested in the German city of Karlsruhe as well as in Zurich.
"It makes sense to try it out further, especially in densely populated cities," says mobility researcher Martin Lanzendorf.
But the expert finds it difficult to assess whether the concepts with the trams will work out.
"It's a great idea because you can get everywhere relatively emission-free," he says. However, the logistics concepts of the companies require complex planning.
"You have to look very hard at which kinds of product groups this makes sense for."
The researcher supports the idea of a courier on a bicycle instead of in a car: "With a typical courier vehicle like this, you're stuck in traffic jams a lot, which you can of course avoid if you have a cargo bike, for example."
After all, deliveries on a bicycle can sometimes cheat their way through winding paths instead of blocking the road.
