Now, 10 years after the first plans, we analyse in this paper what has happened with Underground
Logistic Systems (ULS). The major question in this paper is: Which barriers and enablers led to the
failure of ULS and what ULS spin-offs can be found nowadays? Several factors can be classified as
barriers or enablers. The main conclusions that can be drawn are that the opportunities for try-out were
too limited; political support could have been gained on higher levels; the costs were too high, the
catchment area was too limited; ULS in itself is a very promising system, but there was no one clear goal.
In particular, the lack of a thorough and positive business model in combination with a lack of sufficient
freight volumes almost immediately guaranteed the failure of the initiative. The spin-offs seem to have
taken place in different directions: ranging from rather soft impacts (e.g. scientific knowledge) to more
hard developments (adopting and developing transport and tunnelling technologies), and, although
difficult to quantify, they are of great value.
