City Hub
Affordable electric city transport
City Hub offers companies located in Utrecht city smart storage and green city transport. They strive to leave a small environmental footprint and to make the infrastructure in Utrecht more sustainable. Several shops, hotels and bars already use the services of City Hub, often without increasing their transport costs. Would you like to know more about how City Hub contributes to a cleaner, healthier and better livable city of Utrecht? Read the inspiring Q&A with location manager Menno Mevissen.
Menno Mevissen - © Lotte Stierhout
What services does City Hub offer?
“We offer two different services: (temporary) storage in our smart warehouse on the outskirts of the city and zero-emission city distribution. We use electrical trucks, trailers and bicycles for this city distribution. In practice, it often happens that we combine these two services. For example, the transport company of shoe shop Omoda delivers extra supplies to our warehouse and then we bring these supplies to the Omoda shop with our electric truck.”
What makes these activities so unique?
“With our green means of transport, which are also narrower than conventional transport vehicles, we are not bound by loading and unloading times and we can always reach any part of the city. Furthermore, we often bring different supplies to different companies in one trip and collect other supplies. For example, every day we bring clean sheets to three hotels in the city and collect used sheets all in one trip. These factors ensure that we save costs and leave a small environmental footprint.”
How do you come up with solutions that fit the needs of companies located in Utrecht city?
“At City Hub we think in possibilities. For example, when a café approaches us to improve their logistics, we may also seek collaboration with surrounding cafés. As soon as several surrounding cafes also have their goods delivered by us, we save more costs for both the cafés and ourselves.”
What are your future plans?
“We are developing an automated system in the form of an app. With this app, every driver can see what he or she has to pick up or drop off, where it exactly is and where it should go. We also have concrete plans to supply the city center with electric boats in a cost-efficient way. With these electric boats we could transport larger loads. Think of building materials or industrial waste.”
Where do you hope to be in five years?
“We aim to make Utrecht city completely free of emissions by 2025. We hope to achieve this together with the municipality and regional organisations. The infrastructure must be organised smarter and greener, and only together can we make a big difference.”
