PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
The transport sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the EU. Road transport accounts for more than 70% of EU's freight transportation and causes severe environmental problems by emitting several million tons of greenhouse gases and air pollutant emissions each year into the atmosphere. Intermodal freight transports combine the advantages of road and rail transport, thereby reducing air pollution by 2/3 compared to road-only transportation. But the existing systems for purchasing and selling in the intermodal freight transport sector are non-transparent as well as too expensive and complex for SMEs.
Digitalisation, especially providing easy-to-use broker solutions of those processes will enable SMEs to increase their use of rail instead of road, leading to several socio-economic and environmental benefits, including the reduction of air pollutants such as NOx and PM.
OBJECTIVES
The LIFE FIT project contributed to the reduction of transport-related air pollution in the EU by shifting freight volumes from road to more sustainable rail transportation and by helping to decouple the environmental impacts of transport from economic growth. LIFE FIT aimed to significantly enhance the efficiency and sustainability of EU freight transport by combining intermodal technologies with an innovative logistic broker platform allowing specifically SMEs to book end-to-end intermodal transports in Europe.
The project aimed to:
- Overcome the entry barriers by providing a state-of-the-art intermodal capacity broker platform including the booking of the first and last transport mile combined with the usage of intermodal loading technologies like NiKRASA as facilitator
- Enable collaboration among SMEs active in the transportation sector
- Demonstrate cost-neutrality of intermodal transport via FIT compared to road-only transportation
- Significantly increase the share of intermodal transport for participating transport companies, mainly SMEs, along demonstration routes
- Reduce transport-related pollutant emissions and the consumption of energy and other resources as well as improve social aspects in the logistic sector, such as working conditions and fair competition
- Carry out environmental impact analyses
- Encourage digitalisation and enable for large scale volume/network effects within the transport sector to achieve health and environmental benefits
- Conduct a feasibility study for modal interoperability with waterway transports, assessing multiple environmental and other spill-over effects
- Engage the target audience and stakeholders to reach a critical mass for building a large European intermodal transport network
- Set a standard in land freight transport, serving as best practice in the sector.
RESULTS
Despite significant political and economic challenges negatively impacting the transport sector during the project period, the project successfully developed the digital platform "Intermodal Capacity Broker", which allows the booking of more than 9 764 individual lanes across Europe. Seven permanent full time equivalent positions were created during the project period. 261 freight forwarders and 37 intermodal operators were signed up to the platform. By the end of the project, numerous transports had been carried out, saving more than 115 000 litres of diesel and reducing the EU's primary energy consumption by 4 148 074 MJ. This corresponds to emission savings of 1 751 kg NOx, 531 kg VOC, 522 kg SO2, 102 kg PM 10 and 1 543 275 kg CO2.
These figures still do not meet the targets set at the beginning of the project. However, the CB has managed to raise significant venture capital to continue the development of the ICB and expects to achieve the targeted figures in the coming years.
