Electric van plan to clear city of lorries

Oct 22 2009 By Adrian Pearson, The Journal

A GIANT delivery depot is to be built on Tyneside as city leaders look to set up their own green delivery company.

Council bosses want to keep lorries out of Newcastle city centre and get them to head instead to a purpose-built warehouse. From there, a fleet of electric vehicles will take their deliveries straight to businesses.

The move would let haulage firms avoid congested city roads and it would be linked to new plans to offer council recycling to companies across Tyneside.

In a further move to encourage businesses to sign up to the service, council leaders will consider using local road powers to ban heavy goods vehicles from roads in the centre of Newcastle.

Officers at the city council have had detailed negotiations with at least one company to see if they could form a new business or use their expertise as part of an in-house operation.

They are currently searching for the right location for the delivery warehouse. The council believes it could look outside its own boundaries as it weighs up the benefits of close links to the Port of Tyne and major roads such as the A1 and A19.

Underpinning the venture will be the introduction of electric vehicles with 40 EV charging points already planned for the Tyneside conurbation.

Wendy Taylor, who is the city council’s executive member for environment, sustainability and transport, said that while there where similar schemes in place in other cities in the United Kingdom, Newcastle’s could be one of the biggest.

She said: "It is a good idea in particular for a lot of the small and medium sized companies in the city.

"We can have a site where stock is unpacked and stored ready to go on the shop floor the moment it is needed, freeing up space for many city centre businesses. There are obvious benefits for the city, as it unblocks roads, and because we will be suing electric vehicles, we can seriously reduce our emissions and help improve air quality here.

"We’ve seen one particularly good presentation from a company on how they would run this and we are now looking at what support would be needed, be it infrastructure or finance, and how we can help generally."