TfL freight innovation challenge to tackle congestion

By Matt de Prez

17 January 2020

The Mayor and Transport for London (TfL) has launched London Freight Lab, a scheme to find new ways of making freight safer, cleaner and more efficient.

This new challenge is part of the Mayor's Civic Innovation Challenge, which brings together London’s public and private sector with tech companies to develop solutions to some of the problems facing the city.

In recent years the capital’s streets have seen a rapid rise in the number of goods vehicles, which have increased by around 20% since 2010.

The Mayor’s Transport Strategy aims for a 10% per cent reduction in van and lorry use during the morning peak by 2026.

London FreightLab is looking to offer funding, land sites, and subject matter expertise during the pilot stage for up to six innovative ideas, which could be further developed and tested through the London FreightLab challenge. Ideas should help make the way goods move around London safer, cleaner and more efficient.

Michael Hurwitz, TfL’s director of transport innovation, said: “We want to work with the best market innovators from start-ups to corporates to help solve some of the key challenges that London faces. Freight is essential to London’s economy, but as the number of vans and lorries on our streets continues to go up, so does pollution, congestion and road danger. We believe innovative new ideas could make a real difference in reducing the impact of freight movements on the capital and this is why we’d like to encourage as many companies as possible to collaborate with us to do this.”

TfL is working with ten industry partners on the challenge, which will be using their expertise in the sector to evaluate the innovative ideas and see whether they could work on a larger scale. The partners TfL will be working with include CEVA Logistics, DPD, GNEWT, Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, John Lewis Partnership, Plexal, REEF Technology, Royal Mail, Thames Water and UPS.

Applications are open to everybody and full details are available here http://www.tech.london/challenges/tackling-congestion. The deadline for applying is midday on February 5.