Support for the development of a framework for sustainable urban logistics within Bologna’s Limited Traffic Zone (ZTL)

Background

The City of Bologna, as one of the cities participating in the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities, has laid our an ambitious climate neutrality pathway through its Climate City Contract (CCC), setting out a comprehensive vision for decarbonising the city by 2030. Mobility and the shift towards low-carbon, sustainable transport systems represent a central pillar of this pathway. In support to these objectives, the NetZeroCities programme has been providing tailored technical assistance to Bologna through the City Expert Support Facility (CESF), with the overall goal of accelerating the transition towards a low-carbon urban mobility system that reduces private car dependency and enables sustainable, accessible and efficient movement throughout the city.

In this context, the City of Bologna is currently receiving expert support via the CESF for the development of a new Parking Strategy for the historic centre. This work has already delivered several key outputs, including a detailed reconstruction of parking demand–supply dynamics and a robust evidence base to support the redesign of parking rules and tariffs. The analysis has explored the adequacy of park-and-ride facilities – which are currently insufficient – as well as alternative parking scenarios and regulatory levers, such as differentiated access pricing for the Limited Traffic Zone (ZTL) combined with strong public transport alternatives.

This work is closely aligned with major ongoing transformations in the city centre linked to the introduction of new tram lines. These include the pedestrianisation of Via Indipendenza (with part of the street becoming fully pedestrian and a strong reduction of transit and complete parking removal – even temporarily – along the tram corridor) and significant changes to car access and loading/unloading practices throughout the central area. The overarching objective of these combined interventions is to shift access to the city centre away from private car use and towards tram services and other sustainable modes of transport, thereby contributing to the development of a low-carbon, accessible and more liveable urban mobility system in line with the City’s climate neutrality objectives.

In parallel, Bologna is developing other targeted plans that complement the municipal Parking Plan. In particular, a charging infrastructure plan has already been commissioned to a local consultancy, with the objective of defining rules and development scenarios for electric vehicle charging points across the entire municipality. This work responds to a rapidly evolving context, characterised by a growing number of operators and charging points compared to 15 years ago, and addresses risks related to oversupply, inefficient occupation of public space, and fragmented long-term planning. The plan aims to establish clear rules for concessions, tendering processes, and the use of public space.

Building on these experiences, the City now intends to develop a targeted scenario assessment and pilot street implementation framework for sustainable urban logistics and last-mile deliveries within the ZTL. The assignment will initially focus on four priority tram corridor streets and will provide a high-level replication methodology to guide the subsequent extension of the approach to the wider ZTL.. In this context, phased implementation-oriented refers to the definition of progressive measures over time, be it regulatory, spatial and operational, including intermediate implementation milestones, transition periods and gradual alignment with the City’s 2030 targets. This strategy would be more concrete and implementation-oriented than the overarching Parking Plan, and would directly address the challenges created by tram construction works and pedestrianisation. More specifically, the key objective is to reorganise last-mile urban freight distribution in a way that reduces congestion and emissions, supports the transition towards low-emission and net-zero logistics models, safeguard tram operations and pedestrian areas, ensures a more efficient and coherent use of limited public space within the ZTL, and ultimately support Bologna’s wider climate neutrality commitments.

The City faces a structural challenge in reorganising urban freight and loading/unloading activities within the ZTL in a sustainable and coherent way, particularly in areas directly affected by tram infrastructure and pedestrianisation. At present, freight logistics in the ZTL are characterised by a predominant use of internal combustion vehicles, including medium-sized vans and trucks; a concentration of loading and unloading activities along streets that will host tram lines or become pedestrian; widespread but unevenly regulated use of temporary loading bays; frequent double parking and unauthorised stopping; and delivery patterns largely determined by individual operators rather than a shared organisational framework. Additionally, the overlapping of rules through the years created an unclear and complex regulatory system.

While tram construction works have already forced logistics operators and businesses to adapt their practices, this adaptation has occurred in the absence of a stable, long-term regulatory and spatial framework. There is currently no consolidated system that clearly defines where and how loading and unloading should take place, under which access conditions, during which time windows, and using which types of vehicles. As a result, there is a risk that once construction works are completed, logistics practices will revert to pre-construction patterns, undermining both tram operations and climate objectives.

Without a clear operational plan, the City also risks increasing conflicts between parking needs, tram operations, pedestrian spaces and freight distribution, and failing to translate its 2030 target — progressively shifting loading/unloading access in the ZTL to zero-emission vehicles, whilst restricting access to vehicles with internal combustion engines — into concrete, equitable and enforceable measures with intermediate milestones.

Central to this strategy is to develop a structured pathway for the progressive shift of freight access in the ZTL towards zero emission urban logistic systems, with intermediate milestones and accompanying regulatory and spatial measures that make this transition feasible while ensuring stakeholders acceptance. For these reasons, Bologna requires external support to develop a scenario assessment and pilot street implementation framework for tram corridor streets, as a concrete and actionable first step towards zero-emission urban logistics system. This work must be fully integrated with the broader redesign of parking and accessibility in the city centre, avoiding regulatory or spatial conflicts with the Parking Plan and tram system, and providing the analytical and regulatory groundwork for a wider city-scale Urban Logistic strategy to be developed in a subsequent phase.

The request represents a logical and timely follow-up to the ongoing CESF support for the Parking Plan. From January 2026 onwards, the City initiated a stakeholder dialogue process under the URBANE project (financed through Horizon Europe), together with the Istituto Trasporti e Logistica (ITL), focusing on delivery organisation along tram corridor streets. The proposed logistics plan would provide a structured analytical and regulatory backbone to this dialogue, ensuring continuity and avoiding parallel or disconnected planning processes.

Objectives

The overall objective of the requested support is to provide Bologna with a targeted scenario assessment and pilot streets implementation framework for sustainable urban logistics and last-mile delivery in the ZTL, initially focusing on the streets directly impacted by the tram line, that:

• Produces a comparative assessment of logistics scenarios for regulatory, spatial and organisation measured with an evaluation matrix,;
• Delivers a Street Implementation Framework for the four (4) Priority Tram corridor streets, covering access rules, loading/unloading organisation, zero-emission transition milestones and conceptual infrastructure references, with wider replication methodology for the ZTL;
• Grounds the framework in a structured stakeholder engagement process built on previous municipality efforts; and
• Is fully coherent and integrated with:
  o the new Parking Plan;
  o the PGTU/SUMP;
  o the tram project; and
  o the results of the URBANE project.

Timeline and additional information

Interested parties are invited to submit their proposals by 27 October 2026 (23:59 CEST Time) to [bids@netzerocities.eu]. Proposals should include and address all specific requirements related to the request which can be found below.