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FREILOT Newsletter
The FREILOT pilot targets reduction of fuel consumption and CO2 emissions in urban freight transport. FREILOT is supported by the European Commission DG INFSO under the Competitiveness and Innovation Programme (CIP)
benefits and potential drawbacks.
To complement these four functionalities, the consortium is aiming at solving a difficult problem faced in many European cities: ensuring available delivery spaces to trucks in urban areas. Two complementary systems will be tested. In Bilbao an existing system with parking meters with driver/vehicle identification is used, while Lyon is adopting a simpler solution, LED screens showing arrival of next coming trucks, similar to what can be seen at many bus stations today. These two approaches differ substantially in cost as well in functionality - it will be interesting to compare costs and benefits. In addition to the above mentioned work, the consortium has following the FESTA methodology, to measure the benefits of these systems. There is still more work to be done on refining this plan but a strong basis is established.
Editorial by Zeljko Jeftic, FREILOT Project Coordinator The work of the FREILOT consortium has now entered into its second year. Reflecting over the first fifteen months we can say that it has been an exciting journey but the best parts are still ahead of us. Thus far a lot of the work has focused on technical adaptations of prototypes to be suitable for our purpose – early deployment. On one side FREILOT partners aim to complete the first sustainable implementations of Cooperative Systems in Europe to be used to provide priority at intersections for FREILOT trucks. We are not aiming at creating more “test beds” but to implement Cooperative Systems used by and providing benefits to real stakeholders, fleet operators and cities. If we succeed, our work might lead the way to wider-scale deployment. On the other side the consortium partners are working on adapting systems to support vehicles and drivers through adaptive acceleration and speed limiters and eco-driving support. Project partners Volvo (and soon also Renault Trucks) will implement these functionalities on trucks across Europe to measure the fuel, time and other
Another area of work has been addressing deployment barriers. Work on this topis has just started and will become more important in the second phase of the project. Cost estimations for several of the functionalities have been developed and other deployment questions, such as who will operate what after the end of the pilot, who will pay for the maintenance, etc are all being addressed. It has been very encouraging to see the strong interest from fleet operators in Bilbao and Helmond, leading to an increase in FREILOT trucks from 27 to more than 80. We expect that interest in Krakow and Lyon will increase in the same way once the FREILOT functionalities are installed. More than tripling the number of trucks would certainly be a real success. Last year has been economically challenging for the European enterprises. This has resulted in a delay on the technical adaptation work of 6 months. As we write this first newsletter we are also filing for an extension of the project by 6 months. Looking ahead we will have several kick-off events in the different locations in October. The major event will be held on 28 October in Helmond, The Netherlands, and we hope to see you there. Click here for more information.
Zeljko Jetfic, FREILOT Project Coordinator