ALICE EXPRESS is an activity part of ALICE Thematic Group on Global supply network coordination and collaboration (TG4).
ALICE EXPRESS is a shippers led initiative addressing the following objectives:
- Co-create future transportation solutions.
- Ensure long term transportation capacity.
- Drive emissions reduction.
- Increasing resiliency and sustainability of existing intermodal/rail corridors and services.
The group aims to facilitate the increase of use of rail freight by:
- Increasing capacity of existing/running corridors:
- Increasing frequency or length of existing rail connections.
- Support the creation of new rail/intermodal corridors.
- Increasing resiliency and sustainability of existing corridors:
- Adding shippers’ volumes to running corridors to increase the saturation of existing capacity.
- Decrease the dependency of individual shippers in running services, increase frequency and facilitate improvements in the quality of services.
ALICE acts as a neutral trustee within ALICE EXPRESS to identify synergies and opportunities on specific corridors to increase the volumes shipped on rail. ALICE provides the governance, legal and operational frameworks of the initiative. ALICE ensures antitrust and competition law compliance, provides a framework to meet shippers confidentiality requirements and facilitates the engagement of the necessary stakeholders to make the new connections a reality.
ALICE EXPRESS members have the following benefits:
- Propose priority corridors to work in the generation of additional rail/intermodal capacity.
- Access a network of shippers to accelerate decarbonization through collaboration.
In the medium term, when ALICE EXPRESS has demonstrated success, a whole ecosystem including all necessary actors will be generated to:
- Exchange best practices, new solutions and opportunities.
- Develop and access to documented solutions, use cases and best practices.
- Be part of the ecosystem to find relevant competences and companies linked to ALICE EXPRESS and willing to work on practical innovations to be scaled up and adopted.
Background and origin of the initiative:
- ALICE Thematic Group on Global supply network coordination and collaboration (TG4) gathers, builds and shares knowledge and practical guidance and use cases to reduce emissions and increase efficiency of supply chains through horizontal and vertical collaboration.
- Collaboration among shippers to increase the use of rail has been a promising research concept[1].
- ALICE EXPRESS is inspired by the successful best practice of IKEA[2] and aims at developing governance and operational models to scale up and extent the principles of this experience to a broader community of shippers building on the wide experience of participating shippers and the ALICE team.
For more information and engagement contact Fernando Liesa at fliesa@etp-alice.eu
[1] https://www.etp-logistics.eu/first-alice-logistics-innovation-award-launch-of-the-cloud-report-on-coordination-and-collaboration/
[2] IKEA collaborates to lower carbon emissions on one of Europe’s longest non-stop rail distances