Why is this guidebook needed?

As global freight demand will grow in the coming years, so will its negative externalities, such as traffic congestion, Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air pollution, noise pollution, traffic accidents, safety concerns, and land-use severance. For this reason, more local and regional governments should include freight as a critical component in their climate action plans.

What is a Low Carbon Action Plan for Urban Freight (LCAP-UF)?

Explicit long-term freight goals for an efficient and optimized urban freight movement with a strong focus on emission reduction, while addressing local specific issues like air quality, road safety, traffic congestion, economy. It is an iterative plan with short, medium, and long term targets and associated set of measures. It is also flexible to adapt to political change and local priorities.be used to establish a baseline, which is essential for evaluating the freight transport performance, and identifying future priorities and directions.

Why develop an LCAP-UF?

LCAP-UF will provide a roadmap to authorities in enhancing the freight movement and operations with a low carbon approach aiming to reduce GHG emissions. It facilitates a safe, socially inclusive, accessible, reliable, affordable, fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly, low-carbon, and resilient freight movement in the city.

“The purpose of the Freight Plan is to take a holistic approach to the City’s goods-related work and point the way forward. By means of this plan, the City wishes to communicate its perspective on the development of freight transport clearly and create the right expectations amongst key industry stakeholders.” 

(Stockholm Freight Plan 2018)

Steps of an LCAP-UF Development Process

Developing an LCAP-UF is an iterative process involving various steps. It includes analysis of the current scenario, identification and engagement strategies with stakeholders, setting vision, specific goals, etc. It allows revision of goals based on outcomes of implemented actions.

Benefits of developing an LCAP-UF

The action plan, if developed through a consultative process, is a useful tool to support local decision-makers and participating stakeholders in implementing new policies and taking actions for sustainable freight movement in the city. The plan consists of a clearly defined vision and set goals, and to achieve those goals, a set of actions and implementable measures. The plan also offers a target to measure and track the progress to achieve certain objectives. Such measures can be adopted with a collaborative approach amongst stakeholders for reaching a common vision of a “sustainable city”.

The way forward

LCAP-UF is a starting point for cities to start thinking about freight transportation and embed it as part of city development plans, mobility plans, clean air action plans and climate action plans etc. It is intended to be a catalyst and should be flexible to include any important aspect related to freight movement. 

The following characteristics are important for the success of the developed LCAP-UF:

  • Involve all stakeholders in the development phase
  • Clearly define goals and target scenarios
  • Be a continuous process, it should be revised at a fixed time period, e.g. 2-3 years.
  • The results of implemented actions, along with goal achievement of measures,must be reviewed and evaluated constantly, and achievements should be shared to gain traction from the stakeholders
  • Freight transport related data has to be continually or periodically collected and updated.
  • Should be flexible
Pages from EcoLogistics LCAP guidebook RGB-3

Published in October 2021

EcoLogistics Low Carbon Action Plan for Urban Freight (LCAP-UF) - A guide to developing an LCAP-UF

EcoLogistics: Low carbon freight for sustainable cities, a project led by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, is playing a critical role in helping develop road maps for efficient and sustainable freight transport.
This LCAP-UF guidebook was created to provide local governments with a roadmap in enhancing the freight movement and operations with a low carbon approach aiming to reduce GHG emissions. It facilitates a safe, socially inclusive, accessible, reliable, affordable, fuel-efficient, environmentally friendly, low-carbon, and resilient freight movement in the city. The main objective of this guidebook is to help cities develop realistic and usable localized action plans that move away from the usual “one size fits all” model.