[ Un article de The Conversation écrit Tristan Bourvon – Coordinateur Logistique & Transport de marchandises, Ademe (Agence de la transition écologique) ]
Urban logistics weighs for 25 % of greenhouse gas emissions for city transport, for 33 % of air pollutant emissions and 30 % of the occupation of the roads, not to mention the noise pollution it generates.
In order for the objective of the national low carbon strategy (SNBC) to drop by 50 % of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 is held, technological developments such as fleet electrification will not be enough, even if they are essential. This sector must therefore be transformed which today represents 1.8 million jobs in France. The optimization of logistics flows and the reduction of their impact must also go through organizational innovations.
In recent decades, several types of solutions have already been experienced in France. The Ecological Transition Agency (ADEME) launched, in 2024, the extreme logistics challenge, an innovation program aimed at imagining and then deploying the logistics optimization procedures of the first and last kilometer. As part of this program, she identified three particularly interesting existing solutions on which she conducted a retrospective analysis:
- shared urban distribution centers,
- Microhubs (logistics microplateforms, generally optimized for final delivery by soft transport methods),
- and the pooling of short local food circuits.
The challenge was to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each of them in order to identify the conditions they could be implemented on a large scale in France. A call for projects “ideation”, was also launched, as part of the extreme logistics challenge, to imagine and design this type of solutions on territories throughout France. Fourteen laureates are supported by ADEME. From the beginning of 2026, an experimental phase will be launched to concretely test these solutions.
What do these different solutions consist of and under what conditions can they work? What role can communities play in ensuring their success, coordination between only private actors seems complicated to stimulate?
Urban distribution centers
The first solution, whose ADEME identified in its study 33 experiments, already benefits from a certain decline. The “urban distribution centers” (CDU) are small warehouses installed on the outskirts of the city centers which aggregate the flows of different carriers and wholesalers and then organize optimized distribution tours to the city centers.
The goal is to reduce the number of kilometers traveled, the number of vehicle stops, but also the costs of delivery of the last kilometer. The pooling of flows, of which these CDUs are a form, would participate in dense cities in a decrease of 10 % to 13 % of greenhouse gas emissions.
The first CDU projects, from the principle of road stations born in the 1960s, emerged in the 1990s. Among the cases studied, a part is private or semi-private, taken care of by operators themselves and other mixed or public. The latter are carried by the public authorities and are similar to a “public service” for delivery of goods. Some CDUs are said to be “specific” and associated with a particular activity (construction site, delivery of goods in a place forced as an airport, etc.). Finally, the CDUs can be shared, that is to say shared between several several transport operators.
The study has shown that difficulties were essentially linked to the economic model, notably due to a lack of flow. The projects that have succeeded in perpetuating have found a balance between operating costs and income, by diversifying their sources of financing and integrating value -added services such as deported storage or order preparation.
The environment being competitive, the ideal is that the approach is carried by a community, which initiates for example a legal structure (cooperative, economic interest group, delegation to a local company) and sets up an incentive regulation. Such as traffic restrictions or provision of electric vehicles only that will attract certain players.
In Lille, a center that had closed will thus be relaunched to make shared delivery tours between carriers of the last kilometer.
Microhubs in the heart of cities
Another option, more recent and still stammering: microhubs, which do not benefit from the same decline as urban distribution centers. These mini-entreposts often take the form of a light structure located in the heart of the city, for example in a parking space. These small installations aim to temporarily store goods in order to reduce the distances traveled for the distribution and/or collection of goods.
They also facilitate the break in charge between a heavy goods vehicle and bicycles. The possibility of storing the goods for a limited duration makes it possible to avoid any waiting time between the arrival of a heavy goods vehicle to unload and the relay by cargo bikes. The latter can thus shine around the microhub to carry out the supplies of local economic establishments.
In other words, microhubs overcome a deficit in land spaces for urban logistics in dense urban areas or allow you to meet an exceptional need, for example for a large -scale event that infringes logistics performance, such as the organization of a large sporting event like Olympic Games. These experiments also have the interest of testing the relevance of a temporary establishment for urban logistics before considering possible more perennial developments. They can be fixed or mobile, temporary (from a few months to a few years) or durable.
According to the study, the model suffers from less economic locks than urban distribution centers, but it requires a political will in favor of cyclologists: it is often the land issues and an absence of a structuring regulatory framework which limit their success. In Nantes, a project carried out by Sofub (a subsidiary of the federation of bicycle users), thus aims to assess the potential for the deployment of microhubs in several territories in order to test their relevance.
Pool short local food circuits
The pooling of short proximity food circuits (CCAP), finally, intends to respond to the problems posed by the sale of dry foods or costs in the short sector by considering the pooling of resources and means mobilized to circulate these products between producers and consumers. As part of our study, the radius is set at 160 km. Producers are generally forced to use their own van to come to the city, market their products, the process is expensive, often aging vehicles are not necessarily well filled. Thus, short food circuits are not always as virtuous as expected.
The idea of pooling CCAP is to set up shared organizations to transport crops to cities in a professionalized manner. More mature than microhubs, the structures carrying this scheme, born twenty years ago, are already experiencing many successes. However, they involve taking into account many criteria: the type of consumers (companies or individuals), the complexity of the short circuit, the internalization or not of logistics operations, pooling support (material or virtual platform) …
The main difficulty noted by the study is to convince producers to change their habits and identify the structure that will take care of this organization. An association of producers? The community? The Chamber of Agriculture?
In this regard, a promising project carried out by the Department of Aveyron was selected as a winner of the ADEME call for projects: it associates the Chamber of Agriculture, partner communities and territorial food programs (PAT) to create a Cooperative Society of Collective Interest (SCIC) which will be intended to optimize the logistics of short circuits on the level of the Department, optimized.
The approach, on the scale of an entire department, makes it possible to envisage fairly large efficiency and scale gains, while facilitating the use of these offers by local actors.
What role for communities?
The retrospective analysis of these three delivery options of delivery highlighted the need, so that these solutions work:
- of a robust economic model,
- of a strategic location,
- good coordination between stakeholders,
- regulatory and financial support,
- and good use of digital tools and collaborative platforms.
She also underlines that these solutions all need, to function, to be encouraged by a stronger political will of communities. Leaving private actors to organize between them will not be enough, cooperation between communities, carriers, traders and citizens is decisive for the membership and acceptability of these projects.
This role of communities can take different forms. They can support projects by facilitating access to land, encouraging the pooling of flows, implementing regulatory levers and integrating these infrastructures into urban planning.
Communities can also develop economic and tax incentives, to support local initiatives and encourage carriers to use these infrastructure.
They can finally improve the collection and sharing of data on logistics flows, in order to optimize planning and monitoring of environmental and economic performance.
In Padua, Italy, an urban toll has for example been set up for freight vehicles. Delivering in the city requires a license and, in parallel, a municipal operator, exempt from urban toll, has been set up. Economic actors thus have the choice between paying the toll or going through this municipal player. In France, the city of Chartres has also limited access to the city center for delivery vehicles and has created a local solution.
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