Hamburg plans to massively expand cargo bike logistics

With an extensive study as a basis, the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg aims to expand its pioneering role in cargo bike logistics and move closer to the 2025 goal of "25 percent of parcels delivered by cargo bike." Lutz M. Birke, who has been the head of the "Port and Innovation" department in the Hamburg Authority for Economy and Innovation since 2019, together with Marieke Müller, specialist advisor for science, innovation, and sustainability in logistics, have now received the first copies of the 70-page study.

Under the title "Infrastructure Requirements for Cargo Bikes, Especially for Their Use in Last-Mile Logistics," the compendium was developed in 2021 under the direction of the traffic transformation agency cargobike.jetzt by a multi-member project team. The "Catalog of Measures and Guidelines for a Modular Cargo Bike Infrastructure Concept" contained within it alone takes up around 20 pages.

The areas investigated included the city center (Jungfernstieg and surrounding streets), Ottensen (Ottensener Hauptstraße + northern and southern streets), and Harburg (north and south of Marienstraße). For these study areas, demand calculations for cargo bike and vehicle loading zones, among other things, were conducted.

“If the city’s goal of reducing CO2 emissions from courier, express, and parcel services by 40 percent by 2030 compared to 2017 and to deliver at least 25 percent of shipments with alternative transportation methods such as cargo bikes at that time is to be successfully implemented, a significant expansion of the cargo bike infrastructure is required," summarize the study's analysts.

The study anticipates a significantly increased number of cargo bikes in Hamburg by the end of 2025, around 38,000 to 51,000 units, of which approximately 30 percent are expected to be in commercial use. The authors of the study include:

• Dr.-Ing. Tom Assmann | Institute for Logistics and Material Flow Technology at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg
• Veit Badde | first mile
• Wolfgang Beecken | first mile
• Malte Kania | Institute for Logistics and Material Flow Technology at the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg
• Patrick Mayregger | Teaching and Research Area GuT at the Transport Center of the University of Wuppertal
• Eileen Niehaus | cargobike.jetzt
• Martin Seißler | cargobike.jetzt