The municipal car parks in Barcelona They begin a progressive remodeling to progressively become mobility ‘hubs’. After a long three years, the City Council approved this November the legal change that allows the incorporation of logistics areas and services to all parking lots from the city. And now he materializes the new direction with several awards.
On the one hand, in 2014 they will begin to install ‘lockers’ in the 43 garages open to the public for pick up or return online shopping 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. The mini distribution centers sustainable parcel delivery. And on the other hand, as EL PERIÓDICO has learned, the council has commissioned studies to adapt four facilities from the network to the new ‘hub’ concept: Ciutat del Teatre, Moll de la Fusta, Marina Port and Plaça Navas. They will premiere in 2026, following in the wake of three more that are already in the works.
Click & Collect
The first measure will be the one that reaches the most citizens, by expanding the collection of orders for e-commerce to the entire network of rotation parking lots of the public company B:SM. Capillarity – it covers all 10 districts –, continuous hours and permanent surveillance are the main competitive advantages of this service, especially at night. Currently there is already Amazon lockers and other operators in 33 of the 43 car parks, installed under the pilot test. Next year they will begin the expansion of these points, called ‘Click & Collect’, and the expansion to the ten remaining car parks.
Distribution of goods
Public garages will also have about twenty delivery stations of goods, called units CDUM, after testing this strategy in eight equipment. These are small warehouses where parcel vans deposit a whole load of orders addressed to residents of the area, usually at night to take advantage of this off-peak logistics hour. The next morning, each package is delivered to the recipient’s home using a sustainable vehicle or on foot.
Four new hubs
On the other hand, BSM already awarded in October for almost half a million euros the engineering studies necessary to renovate four car parks in the network and convert them into ‘hubs’ for mobility services. That is, in addition to housing parked vehicles, they serve as a basis for the sustainable distribution of goods, renting a motorcycle by the hour, leaving the bicycle in a secure ‘bike park’ or charging an electric car through the Endolla Barcelona electric charging stations.
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BSM sources explain to EL PERIÓDICO that the four new garages would open within two years. The flagship, as already announced, will be the Ciutadella del Coneixement: a newly built 7,000 m2 parking lot in the Mercat del Peix research center hub. With a cost of 10.7 million euros and initially conceived as a ‘hub’, it will have larger clearances and a more open design. The premiere is scheduled for the second quarter of 2025.
Two other spaces, Gaudi (on this Eixample avenue) and Litoral Port (in the Port Olímpic) will adapt to the new model to the extent that their size and structure allows. The same will happen with the new batch (Ciutat del Teatre, Moll de la Fusta, Marina Port and Plaça Navas), which will have to fit the new uses into a space with pre-existing limitations. The subways renovated in recent years have already incorporated this type of services, such as the one in the Sant Antoni market, as an advance of the new model. They are recognized for a more modern aesthetic and lots of light, features that future ‘hubs’ will also show off.