“I call it the rolling deckchair,” says Johan Erlandsson as his six-wheeled cargo bike, the Velove Armadillo, glides down the cobbled pedestrian streets of central Gothenburg. Stretching 14ft long but only 34 inches wide, the sleek machine is crafted from red-coated aluminium with a pedal-assisted electric drive and a trailer that is low enough for other cyclists to look over.



There is double wishbone suspension on the wheels – a technique similar to what you will find on a Formula 1 car – making it ideal for navigating tram tracks and cobblestones when Erlandsson and his delivery company ferry lunches, cakes and wine to local offices. It’s the perfect distribution method in a city putting a brake on heavy traffic. “You are never stuck in a queue,” says Erlandsson before doing a 360-degree turn in front of a group of amused shoppers. “It’s quicker to get from A to B – and it’s safer.”

Walk through central Gothenburg’s main shopping streets near the cathedral and you are as likely to see futuristic cargo bikes and electric cars dropping off deliveries as you will see trucks and white vans. Cargo distribution has been targeted as part of a long-running initiative to make the inner city area a more attractive environment for walking and cycling. Normal streets have been turned into pedestrian areas, parking has been prohibited and traffic restrictions mean that normal deliveries with vans and lorries are only allowed between 5am and 10am on the most crowded streets.

Johan Erlandsson’s six-wheeled cargo bike. Photograph: Lars Eriksen

Go back 10 years and it was a different picture. Cars were parked bumper to bumper along busy one-way streets, with pedestrians relegated to the narrow pavement.

It takes time to turn around six or seven decades of car-centred city planning – but now it is happening Johan Erlandsson

“It was a messy situation here,” says Christoffer Widegren from Gothenburg’s urban transport administration. “It was a quite cramped city centre, where the traffic situation clearly affected the atmosphere and the competitiveness of the area in a negative way. The city centre could not compete with the shopping malls outside of town in terms of accessibility by car or parking places, so instead it had to present itself as an inviting and attractive environment which offers more than just shopping.”

To facilitate the needs of smaller businesses which are not able to organise early-morning drop-offs, the city of Gothenburg helped launch Stadsleveransen (the City Delivery) to pool together deliveries for shops and businesses within a central zone stretching about 10 streets. Private transport companies leave their packages at a freight consolidation terminal from where Stadsleveransen’s fleet of two electric cars and two cargo bikes carry the goods the final couple of kilometres. There is also a small electric van assigned for transporting fresh fish from the harbour to Gothenburg’s Fish Church market.

A small electric van transports fresh fish from harbour to market. Photograph: Lars Eriksen

The pilot delivery scheme initially served just eight clients when it launched in 2012, but now close to 500 businesses take part – from small offices to major retailers – and more than 350 packages are delivered each day. Stadsleveransen, part-financed by the EU’s Smartset project, only accounts for 20% of the goods volume in the area where it operates, but it handles the majority of deliveries. Fees from private transport companies and advertising sales fund the service, and it is expected to be a self-sustaining business by next year and expand into other parts of the inner city.

According to a report by the EU-funded research project CycleLogistics, an estimated 51% of goods transported in cities could be shifted to bicycles and cargo bikes, significantly reducing emissions and congestion. There are several urban delivery companies turning to cargo bikes, including Outspoken! Delivery in Cambridge which carries out sub-contracted work for major freight companies.

Like the Gothenburg city delivery programme, local government support was crucial in setting up the Cargohopper in the Dutch city of Utrecht. The Cargohopper is a solar-powered electric caravan of trailers which, according to the organisers, can do the work of five vans, cutting 30 tonnes of CO2 emissions on a yearly basis. While Utrecht city council does not fund the service, the small electric cargo train was given special exemptions to access bus lanes and deliver goods outside restricted time zones.

Erlandsson’s Armadillo cargo bike, which he designed himself and which can be adapted to carry three people, is currently being trialled by DHL in the Netherlands. The Armadillo is not yet part of Stadsleveransen’s fleet in Gothenburg, but the local council has ordered eight of the bikes to be used as part of a transport initiative where city officials are encouraged to share pedal-powered vehicles. Since 2011, Gothenburg has increased cycling traffic by 30%, spurred on by the introduction of a congestion charge in 2013, and its 800-kilometre network of bike paths, including reduced-speed mixed zones, now rival that of Stockholm.

“It takes time to turn around six-seven decades of car-centered city planning,” says Erlandson. “But now it is happening, and if plans are followed it will happen quite fast. Most people now understand that lots of cars, vans and lorries in the city centre do not create an attractive atmosphere.

“Smarter mobility and logistics solutions are needed.”

Follow Guardian Cities on Twitter and Facebook to join the discussion