![]() Delivery drives take a fraction of the time they would need during rush hour. ![]() Drivers have keys and stock the stores like pizza elves in the night. Domino’s Pizza is one of a minority of companies that has taken this approach, sending its franchise supply trucks out for graveyard shift deliveries long before their pizza parlors open for business. Holguín-Veras’ favorite fix is to time-shift deliveries so that they occur during hours when traffic is light even in downtown areas. And everyone can play a part, from retailers to carriers to online shoppers. The good news is that there are cures for the unintended consequences of our have-it-now online economy that are being tested or have already been adopted. Convenience has its price: other studies suggest emissions from traffic congestion account for 2,200 premature deaths and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. During that same span, the amount of time Americans spent collectively stuck in traffic rose 600 million hours while fuel waste due to congestion rose 700 million gallons. That cost the economy about $160 billion in 2014 in terms of fuel waste, pollution and lost time, up 9% since 2009. The result: trucks, which represent 7% of total traffic, account for 28% of the nation’s congestion, according to the latest Urban Mobility Scorecard from the Texas A&M University Transportation Institute. “Now,” Goodchild says, “we worry about the last 50 feet.” Logistics researchers used to worry about the first and last mile as the most problematic and least efficient part of freight movement. ![]() And all the while, their trucks are blocking lanes and slowing traffic. Postal Service delivery trucks streaming to their curb-fronts.Īccording to Anne Goodchild, director of UW’s Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center in Seattle, research shows about 80–90% of delivery drivers’ time in urban areas is spent on foot, searching for the right apartment or office, riding up and down elevators and haggling at reception desks where employees don’t want to be responsible for the flood of boxes. Yet they typically have no loading docks or reserved parking for the UPS, Federal Express and U.S. University of Washington (UW) researchers in Seattle, the birthplace of both Amazon and United Parcel Service (UPS), have found that about half of the trucks making deliveries downtown are forced to park in unauthorized spots - blocking alleys, double parking on already congested streets or parking in bike lanes and other no-parking zones.Īpartment and office towers are particular chokepoints because they receive large numbers of daily deliveries from Amazon and other retailers. ![]() The aggravating, costly and polluting effects of all these deliveries on traffic congestion already are being felt in medium and large cities across the country. ![]()
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