When it comes to transporting goods, the city has a loading and unloading arrangement system (DUM area) and micro logistics platforms for optimising vehicle travel for commercial deliveries in the city’s neighbourhoods. The Barcelona Urban Mobility Plan also opts for new mobility-management technologies for improving traffic fluidity, optimises collective public transport and provides for several measures to help you to travel through the city in comfort.
Efficient mobility
You go from home to work by bus in 14 minutes and along 8 stops. You go from your friends’ flat to the cinema cycling along bike lanes. You go out shopping in your neighbourhood making the most of the pedestrianised streets and walking routes. And, if you travel by commercial vehicle, you park your vehicle for easy, fast and efficient loading and unloading using a mobile app. All the journeys you take inside the city have the means and services to let you make them as effectively as possible and by optimising the available environmental and financial resources. For making the very most of public spaces with as little cost as possible.
Barcelona is promoting efficient mobility for reducing road congestion and inefficiencies and cutting the costs of vehicle traffic on public roads. That is why you have mobility services and infrastructure at your disposal throughout the urban area for the journeys you need to make. This means that you can regularly carry out the financial, recreational and personal activities you require, and optimise your journeys while avoiding routes that waste your time and money.
Efficient mobility in Barcelona
Get around efficiently on sustainable transport
You move from one place to another aiming to do so by cutting the journey’s time and costs. So, whatever the means of transport you use, you have the services and infrastructure available to you to make your journey as comfortable and efficient as possible: for travelling, changing your means of transport, parking, resuming your trip, sharing the journey, etc.
Optimising the distribution of goods
The Barcelona Urban Mobility Plan includes measures aimed at reducing the mobility system’s inefficiencies and the number of journeys made without added value, and for commercial mobility too. Such is the case with the DUM areas for loading and unloading goods or the micro-logistics platforms for concentrating goods intended for shops and their distribution using the most sustainable and appropriate means for the city’s neighbourhoods. These are environmentally, socially and financially efficient solutions for a great number of goods-delivery vehicles travelling every day through the city’s streets.
Barcelona has over 8,500 places intended for regulated loading and unloading activities, with over 45,000 instances of parking made every day (BSMSA, data from 2017).
Further information: Urban distribution of goods
More than 4.5 million journeys a year are made in the city
4,594,656 journeys were recorded in 2017 among the city's residents over the age of 15. We are talking about a high use of limited public space that requires coexistence between several means of transport (be it on bicycle, foot, public transport, private transport, etc.) to meet the mobility demand of people and goods and, what is more, to ensure the city’s social and economic activity and quality of life.
You can access these and other useful data on the City of Barcelona Statistics Year Book for 2018.
Pilot test in Ciutat Vella
A specific plan is being launched in the Ciutat Vella district for the mobility carried out there which also includes a plan for arranging commercial loading and unloading. The goal is to bring about a change of model, from the traditional system with heavy-goods vehicles towards another system with soft human-propelled mobility (cargo bikes) that is sustainable and reduces the frictions of mobility in daily life as well as pollution.
The main goals are:
- Achieving a monthly distribution of 40,000 packages, on cargo bikes, representing twice the current figure.
- Having a new micro-logistics load-breaker platform available that would join the other two already in operation.
- Putting up at least three new storage deposits per neighbourhood.
- Putting an end to irregular loading and unloading operations.
Further information: “Ciutat Vella District Mobility Plan for 2018-2023” government measure
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8,500places
Barcelona has over 8,500 places available intended for regulated loading and unloading activities in the city