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The Context

The City of Stockholm is a global leader in the development of new and innovative forms of mobility. The largest city in the Nordics, Stockholm has set the global standard for decarbonization, including the implementation of one of the oldest systems of congestion pricing, and a recent commitment to a large zero emission zone in the center of the city.

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The Problem

The city’s ambitions extend to a more proactive and intentional strategy for reducing emissions from the freight sector. Today the city lacks a global perspective of the movement of commercial vehicles, and particularly the stopping patterns for loading and unloading vehicles.

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While the city has a limited number of cameras and sensors at certain locations, it isn’t financially or operationally feasible to deploy an entire citywide network. However, without insights about commercial vehicle behavior, the city ran the risk of increasing chaos at the curb and competition for the same limited number of loading zones.

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Benefits of Implementation

With a better perspective on curb behavior, the city can develop new enforcement strategies to prevent the double-parking which poses a risk to cyclists on their morning commute. Stockholm also intends to dramatically increase the availability of loading zones and micro-loading hubs throughout the city, but wants to place them in a strategic and useful way. A better understanding of the existing patterns can guide this strategy in a cost-effective manner.

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The pattern of loading zone usage could also support a transition to more sustainable modes, particularly smaller, lighter electric vehicles or cargo bicycles. The city was keen to understand where the highest concentration of ICE (internal combustion engine) stops were still occurring, in order to target resources for decarbonization more effectively.

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Technical Approach

Vianova partnered with the City of Stockholm to bring new insights through its Curb Analytics data product. Aggregating and annonymizing the location information of thousands of commercial trucks and vans in the Stockholm region, Vianova provided specific information about stop behavior, such as the duration, the time of day, and the emissions profile (electric vs non-electric).

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When combined with Vianova’s Intelligence Platform (VIP), the City of Stockholm was able to perform useful and powerful analyses about the behavior in a particular area and quickly identify hotspots for early morning loading in areas with popular cyclepaths. The VIP permits a user to easily add data from their own databases or open data sets, making analyses easy without the use of additional GIS tools.

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The Results

Despite a large number of existing loading zones, Stockholm identified that more than 85% of commercial vehicle stops were actually happening in areas without the loading zones, suggesting both that the locations were inadequate to meet demand and that many key demand drivers were not being served with the existing resources.

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In addition, more than half were occuring between the hours of 6:00 and 10:00 in the morning, validating the city’s concerns about an over-saturation on already busy corridors.

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More than 100 new locations with high concentrations of early morning stops were identified as candidates for new dedicated temporary loading zones. Additionally the data has initiated the investigation of several new strategies, such as incentives for off-peak delivery and co-operative delivery scheduling. Put together these techniques will allow Stockholm to make sure deliveries flow smoothly with less impact to the cyclists, walkers, and public transport users swarming the streets during morning rush.

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Outcomes

The ability to monitor stop behavior over time has given the city the tools they need to evaluate the impact of their new policies on commercial behavior in the central city and beyond.

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In the next phase of work, the City intends to expand the analysis to incorporate the movement between stops, tracking the behavior between origin and destination pairs for commerical vehicles using Vianova’s new OD Flows data.

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About Vianova

Vianova is the data analytics solution to operate the mobility world. Our platform harnesses the power of connected vehicles and IoT data, to provide actionable insights to plan for safer, greener, and more efficient transportation infrastructures.

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From enabling regulation of shared mobility to transforming last-mile deliveries, and mapping road risk hotspots, Vianova serves 150+ cities, fleet operators, and enterprises across the globe to change the way people and goods move.

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Ready to learn more?  Visit our page to get in touch.