APCOA/UPS: Parking Garages to Cargo Bike Hubs!

The US parcel logistics company UPS and the parking garage operator APCOA PARKING have announced the start of an international cooperation in the field of eco-friendly micro-logistics. For several years now, the CEP service provider has been using parking garages in Ireland as a base for the transfer of parcel shipments from larger containers to cargo bikes for last-mile delivery. Starting this year, the two companies aim to institutionalize their cooperation and expand it to Germany. Bases already exist in Dublin, Hamburg, and Cologne, with plans for a rapid expansion of the concept to other cities within the next few years.

Great Potential in Urban Areas

With their cooperation, the companies aim to contribute to CO2 reduction, reduce traffic noise and congestion, and make urban logistics more sustainable. At the same time, it offers the parking garage operator the opportunity to utilize existing capacities in multi-story facilities as APCOA Urban Hubs. UPS, in turn, benefits by being able to speed up deliveries using cargo bikes, as they can avoid traffic jams and maneuver more quickly in city traffic. Under the partnership, UPS delivers its containers to the respective parking garages, from where the cargo bikes then make their deliveries. The hubs are also intended to be used for recharging the e-cargo bikes.

New Business Models: Parcel Boxes, Sharing Points, Charging Infrastructure

The US logistics company had already started a pilot project in Hamburg in 2012 for city deliveries with cargo bikes from a container depot and has since extended this model to 30 German and numerous international cities. One of the biggest challenges was to find suitable and affordable spaces in city centers. The cooperation now potentially opens up urban possibilities that the provider sees in its 1.5 million parking spaces with 1.9 million square meters of space, not only for urban logistics or parcel boxes for self-collection but also for charging infrastructure or technology services like car sharing, which opens up completely new business areas.