Three-year trial

Vienna’s delivery traffic to become emission-free

Mayor Michael Ludwig, Hel-Wacht Managing Director Margarete Landertshammer, Post CEO Walter Umundum and Vienna Chamber of Commerce President Walter Ruck

(Bild: Lukas Zimmer)

32 companies - from family businesses to the post office - have committed to emission-free delivery traffic in two districts of Vienna for three years. The Chamber of Commerce and City Hall want to find out what it will take to make the "last mile" of goods transportation sustainable.

From the summer, things should become significantly quieter and cleaner in the Innere Stadt and Leopoldstadt districts: A three-year field trial for emission-free delivery traffic, primarily with electric vehicles, will then start there, to which 32 companies have now made a voluntary commitment to the Chamber of Commerce and City Hall.

"Vienna is a completely different story"
Austrian Post, which has already committed to emission-free delivery for the whole of Vienna by the end of 2025, is one of the driving forces behind this. Post CEO Peter Umundum can already draw on experience from Innsbruck and Salzburg, for example, "but Vienna is a whole different ball game." Austrian Post started using e-mobility for deliveries ten years ago. At that time, range was still a real problem and drivers were faced with the question "to heat the car or to drive it?", but no longer today.

By 2025, Austrian Post wants to deliver emission-free throughout Vienna, and by 2030 throughout Austria.

(Bild: Österreichische Post AG)

Sustainability is starting to pay off
Umundum takes an entrepreneurial view of the sustainability initiative: the costs of the e-fleet, including subsidies, are now equivalent to those of conventional vehicles, partly because Austrian Post can draw on plenty of solar power from its own sources. For trucks, where they are currently working with biofuels, it is "more difficult, but feasible". Last but not least, sustainability is now a competitive advantage with customers.

There is only a supposed contradiction between economy and ecology.

Wiens Wirtschaftskammerpräsident Walter Ruck

Bild: Lukas Zimmer

Walter Ruck, President of the Vienna Chamber of Commerce, also wants to use the scientifically supported experiment to "combat the prejudice that you can't do good business with sustainability". He hopes that it will not just be 32 companies - from family businesses to supermarket chains - and not just two districts. The diversity of the companies involved is intentional: the aim is to gather plenty of data on what is really needed for emission-free delivery traffic.

City helps with e-charging stations in charging zones
Mayor Michael Ludwig promises the city's support, for example with e-charging points in charging zones. E-delivery traffic also means a better quality of life for local residents, he emphasized. Delivery traffic may sometimes seem "annoying, but we need it. Everyone who goes shopping takes products with them that have been delivered." He sees the first foray into e-delivery as proof of the "consistent work on the climate program" and believes: "We are already relatively far along."

For Margarete Landertshammer, Managing Director of the security company Hel-Wacht, climate-friendly business is undoubtedly good business anyway: you just have to think further ahead than some others and calculate the costs of unchecked climate change. That's why "we have to do something now. We owe it to the next generation."