View the January 2018 seminar recording
Jennifer Symoun
Good afternoon or good morning to those of you to the West. Welcome to the Talking Freight Seminar Series. My name is Jennifer Symoun and I will moderate today's seminar. Today's topic is Freight Deliveries and the Last 50 Feet of the Supply Chain.
Before I go any further, I do want to let those of you who are calling into the teleconference for the audio know that you need to mute your computer speakers or else you will be hearing your audio over the computer as well.
Today we'll have four presentations, given by:
Today’s seminar will last 90 minutes, with 60 minutes allocated for the speakers, and the final 30 minutes for audience Question and Answer. If during the presentations you think of a question, you can type it into the chat area. Please make sure you send your question to “Everyone” and indicate which presenter your question is for. Presenters will be unable to answer your questions during their presentations, but I will start off the question and answer session with the questions typed into the chat box. If we run out of time and are unable to address all questions we will attempt to get written responses from the presenters to the unanswered questions.
The PowerPoint presentations used during the seminar are available for download from the file download box in the lower right corner of your screen. The presentations will also be available online within the next few weeks, along with a recording and a transcript. I will notify all attendees once these materials are posted online.
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PDH certificates are now available for Talking Freight seminars as well. To receive 1.5 PDH credits, you will need to fill out a form. Please see the link in the chat box. Certificates will be emailed one week after the seminar. A seminar agenda has been included in the file download box for those who need to submit an agenda to their licensing agency.
Finally, I encourage everyone to please also download the evaluation form from the file share box and submit this form to me after you have filled it out.
Our first presentation will be given by Anne Goodchild, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Washington. As Founding Director of the Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center and the Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Online Master’s Program she leads the University of Washington’s academic and research efforts in the area of supply chain, logistics, and freight transportation. Dr. Goodchild serves as the Freight Systems Group Chair for the Transportation Research Board.
Anne Goodchild
Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon to all the attendees on the phone. We appreciate your time and your interest in learning a bit more about the final 50 feet. We have spent time over the last 18 months defining the final 50 feet collectively and establishing some shared research goals and moving forward with this important research area. It's my job to really give the background behind why the final 50 feet is an important topic to us. We want to give some sense of our research in the Freight Lab. I'm trying to set the stage for the presenters that will follow me.
For the final 50 feet of the urban goods delivery system, it begins where the truck parks. It is shown on the picture on the left. As city planners and transportation planners and analysts, we have overlooked the complexity of this piece of the supply chain and the complexity and the importance of this. We've really been focused on the transport system. We haven't had good information about this essential piece that is undertaken. Once that vehicle is parked, the delivery is actually carried out with handcarts by foot. In some cases, it takes up the vast majority of the time of these delivery routes. It is important to consider it because that piece of the system determines where and when and the nature of the truck parking or stopping at the curb or other freight facilities. In its current state, we argue in Seattle and other metropolitan areas that it is not functioning as intended.
You can see in this picture here, this driver has parked in the bike lane and the travel lane partially because there is access at the curb. He has prevented the cyclists from using the infrastructure that is dedicated to bicycles and requires that the vehicles also maneuver around the truck and into the turn lane. That's not the intent. That's not how we designed this infrastructure. In Seattle, the curb is intended with commercial vehicles for active loading and unloading. The intent is not to curb for longer-term parking for more than 30 minutes. That is a challenge at this moment in time in terms of capacity of the curb to serve that intent. It is also the amount of time for those drivers where they are required to be away from the vehicle. You don't see any people. You don't see the drivers in this picture because they are away from the vehicles doing the important work that they do to conduct delivery.
Seattle has explicit prioritization for curb space. The first one is transit use. The second is passenger and commercial vehicle loading. The third is for customer parking. The intent is that commercial vehicles use a curb for active loading and unloading. That really overlooks the requirements that drivers have to carry out a delivery. Sometimes in very large buildings, there are parts that they leave and they are not actively loading and unloading. These are the types of load zones that we have in Seattle. They are less than 30 minutes. What we see is that violations of expected practice, which are very common. Because delivery drivers are really just trying to do their work, this driver on the left has actually parked in the through lane and is trying to negotiate getting goods from his vehicle up the curb and into the food establishment. He is competing with a lot of users of that sidewalk space. We have insufficiently served his needs in terms of bringing in goods to the city. On the right, you can see that this truck is parked in a no stopping zone. There was not an adequate alternative solution. He has actually closed the door on the truck. He has left the truck.
We also end up with some unintended use that could potentially cause some safety concerns. It's common to see trucks parked in bike lanes. The function of the bike lane to provide protected space for the cyclists, but this cannot occur. The picture on the right is trying to show that we see a lot of drivers doing their work on the street. Walking through lanes and close to through lanes without adequate protection for them. Their activities on the truck aren't accommodated in terms of space or the infrastructure.
The other piece of this because of the last 50 feet, it is a very costly part of the delivery system. It ends up costing the retailers and consumers. It impacts the transport system. We have a costly last mile not just in terms of parking and maneuvering, but also there are the failed deliveries that occur. We have existing congestion on city streets that is exacerbated by the behaviors of many of these delivery vehicles. In some cases, there are consequentially conditions that may not be safe for all users. To get at some of this and to try to plan for it and design roads that work better for the stakeholders, what we identified was where the truck stops. What is happening outside of that vehicle?
We observe how the drivers move the vehicle and where activity and where the receiver is and how they need to maneuver within the building. We realized that we do not understand that well. It is that part of the system that has been overlooked. We set out with some initial research questions. These are fairly high-level questions. How do the drivers select parking locations? What are the steps in the delivery process? How long do each of these steps take? What are the opportunities for modifying that system in a way that would produce results that were more compatible with deliveries? How does the infrastructure that we have need to be modified and altered. The Urban Freight Lab engaged in some research and data collection activities that my colleagues will speak to in more detail, I will not go over those.
In the longer-term, the other speakers will address activities that are currently going on. I wanted to point out that we have identified a very rich research area with our partnerships and goals. We've identified some specific research activities. This is an area that I hope that this webinar helps spark interest. These are the ones that have been present for us. Many of them are quite interdisciplinary. I think there is a rich area of research of not just the work that we have conducted. The longer-term goals of the Urban Freight Lab within the supply chain presentation are really to be able to look at urban freight as a system to understand the capacity and how that system might be improved with one of the levers that we have. How does that affect each of the stakeholders? We feel very strongly in the Urban Freight Lab with the empirical experiments, which are as important as modeling. This is a system that is happening every day. We want to engage directly with them as much as possible. We need to engage all of the key stakeholders. You will see that from our panel today, both the public sector as well as the private sector carriers and retailers and receivers of goods. It's very important to bring that community together, we don't feel like we can really address this challenge without doing that. In the long-term, we can support vibrant urban living. It is a place where carriers and retailers can thrive economically. We can also have safe access to all the things that we want to see in an urban environment.
Thank you, I will pass it on to Barb now.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you, Anne. Our next presentation will be given by Barb Ivanov, Director of the Urban Freight Lab, SCTL Center, University of Washington. Barb’s research is focused on the Final 50 Feet of urban supply chains. Prior to joining the UW, Barb was the Freight Systems Division Director at the Washington State Department of Transportation.
Barb Ivanov
Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to dial in for this important topic. We are organized as the Urban Freight Lab. That Urban Freight Lab has private sector members, as well as the City of Seattle Department of Transportation. Both of those entities are supported by our work at the University. We use a systems engineering approach to solve delivery problems that overlap both the city’s and private companies’ spheres. The problems that we are seeking to solve cannot be solved solely by the delivery company or by retailers or by building or developer owner/manager. It cannot be solved solely by the city itself. I won't call them stakeholders, Urban Freight Lab members are the process owners who control the process steps from where the truck stops to where the delivery is made.
We have formed a living laboratory. This Lab does not have Bunsen burners or a building. We generate promising solutions and evaluate those, potentially modeling different outcomes. Then we actually test them on the street and inside the towers in the city.
We have five founding funding members. It's important that companies fund the Urban Freight Lab so they have skin in the game. Even more important than the amount of money that they bring to this effort, are the senior executives that commit to appear here in Seattle for about 5 to 6 meetings during the year, that last one full day. Those meetings are not where we provide them with information that they can observe. Those meetings are the space where they make decisions. The decisions that propel the Lab forward are based on the data and the data services that we provide.
The definition of the Final 50 Feet of supply chains matters. We think of global supply chains that cross international boundaries bringing goods from the sources of production to consumers in the U.S. We think of national and regional supply chains that could be moved by water or by rail. We have talked for many years about the last mile, which is usually defined as the movement of goods from a distribution center to the municipality or rural area of consumption. This (Final 50’) is the first time that we have addressed and included the vertical network. It is a part of the supply chain. We focus on the use of scarce curb and alley space. We also include buildings’ internal loading bays, which are privately owned. Not all cities have alleys. I have learned that Chicago is the alley capital of the U.S. There are over 1,900 miles of alleys there, while New York and Washington DC have almost no alleys.
We looked at the delivery processes for each step of delivery in the Final 50 Feet. We set out to study two priority goals. The Urban Freight Lab members determine what we will work on. Retailers include Costco and Nordstrom. They are doing very well and they drive a lot of what is going on in e-com. They are the ones who set these goals.
Goal number one is to reduce the amount of time that the truck is parked in a load/unload space. What's good about that? I think someone mentioned that you lower costs for delivery firms. That may be passed on to the customers. It may not. At least there is a potential there. It's also a more efficient use of truck unload spaces, which creates more productive city curb or private loading space. The faster you can turn those, the less you need to add capacity or feel the impact. There's also room for other vehicles that actually pass through the alleys.
The second goal is to reduce the number of failed first delivery attempts. This photo shows notices left at a residential apartment building. With the convenience of ordering online comes things that are not going to be convenient. You need to take this sticker and you need to go to an alternate location to find your goods. Not only did you eliminate the reason you shop online, because of its convenience, you now cause additional car trips to go pick that up. You also are damaging the retailer’s brand when this happens. The purchaser is not upset with FedEx. They are upset with Nordstrom or Costco. They did not get the goods that they ordered.
I think the important point for many of us working in the public sector is to note that this goal when achieved can actually lower traffic congestion in urban areas. Our members are telling me that up to 15% of all delivery attempts fail the first time. This is on a basis of hundreds and thousands of trips.
We can also cut crime and provide a safer environment with this goal. There are areas that delivery companies will not deliver to, or if they do come they won't deliver highly valuable parcels and packages because the rate of theft is just too high.
I'm going to switch from the work of the Urban Freight Lab and its organizational work and its goals to talk about the first project we took on in the city of Seattle. That was to define for the first time what is the truck load/unload space network. What are its features? What are the elements? How does it function? Can we precisely map it?
In 2016, the SDOT geospatial database included all of the curb GIS layers with an excellent definition of the types of parking spaces, commercial vehicle loading zones and other short three-minute load zones, as well as passenger spaces. But t wo other elements of the network were completely missing. One was the privately-owned docks and bays. There were no accurate records of them to be found in building permits.
The other thing that they did not have was an up-to-date map that recorded features of the alley network. They engaged the Urban Freight Lab in the University of Washington to identify the locations and features of all the private truck load/unload spaces in a planning area called Center City. Center City is comprised of major urban centers within the city of Seattle; five of them are listed here. This is the planning area, and Chris can talk more about this. It initially began because they wanted to coordinate the street network with transit and bicycling and other types of personal movement (in Center City).
We found out in our work that it was much simpler to get out on the street and record the facts than to search through historical records to try to identify which building owners and operators had freight loading bays or loading docks and which did not. Our students went out and they actually walked every block of those urban centers in the city of Seattle. They found that you can see almost 550 potential loading bays. But when they undertook the survey, there were closed doors. Nobody can tell what is behind that door (shown in the slide photo). Is it a truck loading bay? Is it simply a storage area? An entrance to the back door of a business? What exactly is that? Working with the private sector, in this case UPS, greatly reduced the uncertainty in our data collection project. We provided them with details and information of each one of these 206 cases (where the door was closed). We included photos, addresses, as well as geolocations. Their input reduced our total uncertainty rate to less than 1%. We found that based on that information, in these urban centers of the city of Seattle 87% of the towers rely on deliveries solely from curb and alley spaces. They have no loading bay or loading dock under or proximate to the building. Only 13% actually have access to that kind of facility.
I'm going to talk a little bit now about alley purpose and design, the third element of the city’s load and unload network for trucks. Their initial purpose from 20 years ago was to provide access to the back of buildings for all of the services and goods deliveries. It was for the plumber, electrician, for picking up trash and for storing trash receptacles and for fire and other emergency purposes. Many major U.S. cities still have alley networks. I've got two photos here. The top photo shows a newer alley built in the South Lake Union area that has been predominately redeveloped for Amazon. Both of these alleys in the city of Seattle have overhead sky bridges, they both have electrical panels, they both hold waste containers. But when you compare the two, only one is actually wide enough for two-way directional traffic. It has a walkway to the left that allows that door to open without obstructing trucks and movements.
Trucks don’t have to make a 90-degree turn into a loading bay. There are design elements in the alleys, as well as design elements in buildings’ loading bays and loading docks that are accessed from the alley. These design elements are controlled by the city. In addition to geo-locating every piece of the system, we are now collecting data on alleys on the city's behalf.
What is the (truck load/unload) network? It is comprised of those three elements. How does this network connect to the buildings?
Next we conducted a data collection exercise by following the delivery person from where they stop in the truck, and created a process flow map that accounts for each step. We collected data on delivery persons activities as they completed the delivery, as they crossed intersections on the road and took freight elevators up to deliver packages to the tenants. What we learned in that work is that the policies and processed inside these buildings controls the ability to achieve our two goals. What is going on in those buildings? It's not what's going on in the street that controls the number of failed first deliveries, it’s what goes on in the buildings. The buildings’ policies and processes also control the amount of dwell time that the truck takes when they are parked in any part of the load/unload network.
Here is a diagram of a much-simplified process flow at the Seattle Municipal Tower. That's a 62-floor office tower, which is one of the five buildings that we have studied. We also studied a major retail center as well as a residential tower. In this case, the process flow map showed that there are three major types of delivery activities. They are (1) entering the building where the truck parks, going through security, the truck lowers its gate. (2) They load up their cart and then they go up and down the freight elevator to make deliveries. (3) They need to go back out through the security system to exit. There were packages that were unable to be delivered. They load the truck up with things that they picked up because there are making pickups as well. They maneuver back out of the building. That’s the simplified look at this particular building.
We followed drivers to collect this data. You can see to the left that those three groups of processes that are entering the building: entering is about a third of the time, delivering about 40% of the time, and exiting a little bit less, which is 26% of the time. This is the average total time that all of our observations gave us. This was taken over the course of two weeks, three days a week.
Exiting through security is another 5% of the time. You can see that about 12% of the time spent inside this building is in dealing with security.
These findings were not intuitive for us. I think this is really interesting information.
We plan to cut out the amount of time spent in that delivery group of process steps by having what we would describe as a mini distribution node. That could be a concierge or a mailroom, or it could be a locker system. As you can see, a mini-node that is near where delivery trucks park can eliminate a great deal of the time that the delivery person needs to spend in the building. The decision to have a staff mailroom, or concierge, or whether they have an automated locker system is controlled by the building manager and by the developer and architect with they first designed the infrastructure that could make a process change possible. So that leads us to understand not only this one example, but the other four process flow studies in buildings that we conducted.
City incentives can help builders and developers, architects, and owner/managers improve the truck network for productivity. I want to give credit to my colleagues at the city of Seattle Department of Transportation, Chris Eaves and Jude Wilcher, for their leadership and Chris actually naming this the Final 50 Feet.
Most people are familiar with commute trip reduction programs. What if the city offered incentives so that building managers will be encouraged to provide mini-distribution nodes - a goods trip reduction strategy? And again, it needs to allow the delivery to move more rapidly. The second goal is longer term, that is changing building codes. It needs to meet the demands of the modern city. New construction would actually include private loading bays and or loading docks. It would reduce the demand that these deliveries are putting on curb spaces and alleys. I would be glad to answer any questions later on. Thank you for your attention.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you, Barb. It looks like we have a good discussion going on in the chat pod. Our next presentation will be given by Chris Eaves, a Senior Civil Engineer with practice in public agencies in Texas, Nevada, and Washington State. His career has ranged from field work to project design, and over the last five years he has managed Seattle’s freight transportation program, including rail, port and roadway modes.
Chris Eaves
Thank you very much. Both Barb and Anne have been working with the University of Washington to help understand a baseline of our own city streets. I want to talk a little bit about that and discuss it on a why this and why now basis? What makes a difference in what we are doing with this collaboration?
A little bit about Seattle. It's a strong growth city where we are usually fighting between first and second for the growth of the nation. There are about 4 million people in our regional area. They are beneficial for us. We need to create an urban goods delivery strategy. There is a vision that a dense urban environment really creates an exponentially increasing type of conflict. I have been following the discussion. It gets to the heart of some of the work that is being taken care of. We needed to understand what was going on because we didn’t have that basis.
We went to the University of Washington because we needed to understand what was going on in a group that really wasn't being well represented in terms of our own city development. The partnerships are listed up there. We really had to make it about solutions rather than enforcement. Ticketing costs are passed on to the consumer. If the enforcement is going to be accessible, it has to change the behavior. If it is just a cost pass-through it is not changing that behavior. That's a very big piece of what's happening. It is the entire process where there was a one-day session with everybody in the room, we asked the private partners what made a difference to see what we could connect to that make it easier for us too. It's basically to improve first time deliveries and success. That is a financial incentive for them. We want to reduce the delivery time as well. A mile saved in UPS truck saves carbon emissions for everybody. We are willing to test improvement. We are wanting to understand what is going on. And with that University of Washington commitment, they have taken on an important role for us. They are considered impartial. The goal is to make sure that we can all talk about and agree on our facts and information. We have been spending the better part of the last year gathering that information through the University of Washington.
Please don't try to read this. This is an example of what is being done at the University of Washington. We are trying to find our private bay inventories. They developed that app to try to make as clean of data acquisition as possible. What we have is up here right now. They have worked the logic through in terms of getting a delivery from that truck to the final recipient. To give you an example, we were in a Skype meeting and someone talked about the value associated with this and understanding what they could cut down in time for delivery and how they could benefit. Someone made a joke and said they had paid so-and-so for this app. We heard somebody say something different. People were beginning to realize that they had something here that was of value. It's what happens when you have pure research. I wanted to bring that up because we are getting and incredible amount of the value in this collaboration, especially with the University of Washington. Before I get too much further, this time and motion study was performed on five different buildings. It was on residential and office buildings. It was used in a shopping/entertainment center. We needed to find out how it happens. We do see differences. Residential operates completely differently. It has different types and days of uses. We began to gather this information and pull it together. We began to get a really good understanding of what was going on.
Some of this has already been mentioned. About 87% of buildings in our densely developed downtown that rely on public roadway caught the attention of our directors. Nobody really understood how deeply we depend on public right-of-way to get goods into the commercial core. There's been a discussion on the side about first, second, and third priorities. That is actually true. It needs to operate through transit and through pedestrian and bike. Again, those goods are necessary for the daily operation. We still need to find a way to get through. That second bullet is about the public/private interaction. It speaks a little bit about the buildings and research that I just mentioned. It's deeper into what happens at the curb on the street and inside the building. It begins to understand the deliveries that blur the line between public and private operations. They both influence each other.
Building management influences operations on the street much more deeply than we have ever understood. As we begin to get this information pulled together, we begin to understand where our loading doesn't work. It's difficult to move goods by cart or by hand. You’re talking about several hundred pounds of goods across a few hundred feet. It takes more time exponentially. We are beginning to understand what we need to do as we go get the data. This map to the right is not yet complete because we don't have all of our alley information. But we begin to see that there are certain buildings where we really need to watch out for on a case-by-case basis as we develop the transit and bike network within our downtown. We as a city are very committed to performing excellently in bringing our downtown population in and out through alternate modes of transportation. So, in 2017, we also did a commercial vehicle load zone use analysis on about 75 zones to understand what their uses are. We needed images to understand what their uses were. It's very important to understand that. We needed a deeper dive to understand how the curb is being utilized or over or underutilized in a manner that we can understand minutely, the information that we have been gathering. The last part when we talk about alleys, we do have a great alley system. Many developers make a request that they vacate the alleys for a larger building footprint.
That first floor use is a very valuable thing. Every square foot makes a difference. As we began to understand what was happening in alleys we actually had anecdotal information of delivery drivers having this fight. When we got into it, we ended up finding council member interest. We began to speak to how much we needed to connect not only with our political and economic advocates, but with any ability to reduce our truck or goods delivery time within the downtown core with something that provides better transit, bike, and other mode operations. It makes us more efficient. This began discussions on the concept of land-use. We are talking about how we can best use and best direct our efforts to make the most efficient city we can while also being as livable as possible.
One other question that we are asking is about preserving access. That is the same one where we are seeing trucks double parked on a loading bay cut out. The image on the right shows that same loading bay cut out which has been filled in and is being used as a transit stop. It also shows a truck parking where it has always parked because it is the safest location to perform its operations. We had to start asking the right questions and asking the right people. We need to be able to predict their behavior accurately. We are already losing one of the traffic areas at a period of time. It implies that we need our private partners to help us understand what the system looks like. I usually say that over the past 50 years, a lot of delivery companies have been successful by being practically invisible. Nobody really cared to see what was happening. In many cases, it did not matter. There was adequate parking inventory. As our downtown area develops, as we become 70% urban by the year 2040, this type of operation is necessary for day-to-day living and is going to need to be incorporated.
Moving forward, we want to be able to understand how we best mitigate building conditions. I can't emphasize how important this is. I believe it was mentioned that no one size fits all. We always try to emphasize that we are going to need a basket of answers. Sometimes we will have to do this block by block to get a good idea of what we need to do to support the building. We do need to reduce our dependence on enforcement tools. We are having great difficulty understanding how much or little success we have. Frankly, it's difficult to deal with the parking enforcement group to manage accurately. At the bottom, the longer-term goal is to develop self-sufficient buildings. This is in terms of delivery. How do we get materials in and out for land-use and building design? The information that we are gathering is of importance to the city as well as to our design developers to help provide ammunition. We do not need three loading bays. We are trying to get to a point where we have data to support our suppositions. That's why we have been really pleased with our partnership with you Barb and Anne. We can really help influence design and transportation operations. It has been our goal. I'm going to leave the rest of this for our final speaker. I want to say thank you very much.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you, Chris. Our final presentation will be given by Mike Mirides. Mike has been with the United States Postal Service for 23 years and is currently the Manager of Delivery Field Performance, and is based in Denver Colorado. Prior to that assignment he worked in the Sacramento, CA area as an Area Manager of Post Offices, Postmaster and several other positions.
Mike Mirides
Good afternoon and good morning to everyone. I just want to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to talk about the U.S. Postal Service freight carrier perspective. I will be touching on a couple of things and will give an overview of the package delivery history of the Postal Service. I want to give you a brief overview of where we have been and how that led us to where we are right now, our interest in that final 50 feet, and why it is getting so much more focus in our business and what we do every day. Why does the research matter? It does pertain to the USPS and specific areas. What will we do with the findings? What can we use? What could be changed to become a more efficient delivery platform?
This is a brief overview. We were established in 1775 to provide universal mail service. While we delivered packages, they were limited to 4 pounds. It really wasn't very large items that we were delivering up until 1913 when it changed. We raised the limit to 11 pounds. Our parcel post division was what spurred parcel delivery throughout the country.
The two big mail order houses that came behind that were Montgomery Ward and Sears. While package delivery was important, it was not our bread-and-butter. It was the delivery of mail that was important. In 2006, we really saw a significant decline in the mail volumes and the impact of the increase of package volumes. These charts here just show how in 2008 there was a decline in mail volume and increase in package volume. It's pretty significant. It was a 36% decline for first-class mail. There was a 42% increase in package volume. We are having to reshape the way we deliver mail. Everything we had done in the past was really geared towards the letter and flat mail that we delivered.
Packages are making a significant portion of what we are doing. It is causing us to stop and rethink the way we are delivering. The interest in the final 50 feet comes with packages making up a far greater percentage of delivery than it was in the past. This presents challenges. We have never experienced that before. This is true in the metropolitan and residential areas. There are a growing number of delivery companies. We are competing for that same business. It has an impact in many areas including parking, building resources, loading docks, elevators, it's just adding congestion that we have not seen before. With the expansion of e-commerce, consumers are spending far less time in the brick-and-mortar stores and far more time online ordering packages and so forth. It has been increasing the number of vehicles on the street. It goes without saying, competition is getting fierce in our industry in many cases. If you own a vehicle that drives, you are a delivery company. I've had cars pull up making Amazon deliveries to my house. Now we have Uber and everything else that is joining that network. It's just a competition that is fierce. Business deliveries are what we have been talking about. In the past, we would have carriers stop in front of apartment buildings going and feeding the letter and flat mail into the mailbox and a few parcels will go in the parcel containers nearby. They would be on their way. Nowadays though it is different. There are so many packages, there's no way to have the adequate parcel lockers at least up to this point. The carriers make door-to-door delivery in many cases. It is increasing that dwell time of the vehicles out in the apartment complexes as well as the employees’ time spent in the building. We also have to maintain the universal delivery amongst all of this. We have to work in solutions.
I've noticed in the chat some folks are writing about that possibility to have off hours delivery. We get significantly impacted by that. Customers want their mail during the day when they are available. If we are delivering packages at night and mail during the day, we are still putting two vehicles on the road instead of one. There are some differences that we have than other common carriers that may not share that same business need.
Why does the research matter? Pretty much everyone shared about that. We deliver efficiency to be competitive in this business. It keeps our customers’ costs down. It has become more of an issue for all of us. If we can get behind this process or this consortium and figure out ways that we can become more efficient, it is beneficial to us as well as to customers. The traffic impact says it all. It just jams everything up. I included on this slide a snippet that I found online. The mayor plans to ticket truck drivers and ban deliveries during rush hour. A lot of those discussions that we have had in the Urban Freight Lab, how do we go about the right way? I don't think that is a complete answer.
We have the environmental impacts. The more time that is spent on the road, there more vehicles. You will have air quality decrease. It will grow on and so forth. There are quite a few environmental impacts as well.
What can we do with those findings? We are hoping to be able align routes to afford delivery at the optimal time. Have we done things differently? We are looking closely at that as well as vehicle assignment and procurement. We want to put the minimum sized vehicle to get the job done on the particular route. We are in the process of procuring tens of thousands of vehicles over the next several years. We also have technological insights. We have given handheld scanners to our carriers and employees. Anything that we come up with that might lead us to use technology to improve our delivery, even in our vehicles for identification of availability of delivery spots. Something along that line that we may be able to use those findings for. That's pretty much all I have is a brief summary from the Postal Service from the freight carrier's perspective of why we see the importance of this freight lab.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you, Mike. We are now going to move into the Q&A session. I know there has been a great deal of discussion in the chat pod. I have seen a few questions in there as well. We are going to get through those. I don't know if the presenters had time to read through the discussion in the chat pod. I may ask for some thoughts on that as well. We will go ahead and start with the questions. This first one question was for you, Anne. Are you familiar with the November 2017 National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) resource paper, “Curb Appeal: Curbside Management Strategies for Improving Transit Reliability?”
Anne Goodchild
Yes. All right. Is there anything specific there?
Jennifer Symoun
The person that asked the question seems to think that you may not be familiar with it. I'm not sure why that thought was there. I don't know if you want to address it at all. Does the paper factor into your research at all?
Anne Goodchild
It's more recent than we have been looking at this problem. Also, the point I do want to make is we don't suggest that we are the only people interested in this problem. We are opening up on a research field. There are questions within that. It will be a pressing issue as it is now as demonstrated in that publication. There is a lot of interest in current management. How to adapt and change in what we do to best serve the current need. Yes, we certainly welcome a variety of papers. There was a lot of talk. Curbs are interesting and an important part of our system. Perhaps, it has not been given enough attention to. One of our focus areas right now is on how to test and come up with new strategies for current management and how to anticipate what approach might be most desirable.
Chris Eaves
This is Chris Eaves. I would love to add on to that. Some of that crisis management assumes alternatives are available. When we have 87% plus of our buildings relying on a right of way, it becomes much more difficult to incorporate the load space options or strategies in that document. It comes down to one size doesn't fit all. We're trying to find out any solutions for here. They are scalable and usable in other urban areas.
Jennifer Symoun
Great. Thank you. Let's see, there's another question for you. How is the delivery sector needs considered in the determination of the placement of bike lanes or other shared uses?
Anne Goodchild
I'm going to ask Chris to start with that one. That is a question for the city.
Chris Eaves
Let's see in terms of how we are doing in equity. We are actually at the point of just understanding we are in need. Many of our city goals have focused on getting these lanes in. We have begun to understand some the impacts here and we now understand more about our need for mitigation.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you. I have another question that I will start with you. The only penalty on the sample signs Anne showed is towing. While that’s severe, the vehicle is unlikely to be around long enough for police to document time exceedance, then contact the towing company, and for the towing company to arrive. Have you tried or considered steep fines? Is there a limit to the delivery company’s ability to absorb repeated fines? It just seems like controls will be violated chronically in crowded areas unless the consequences are really painful.
Barb Ivanov
This is Barb. What you are talking about is enforcement. How enforced can it be? That would be a really interesting policy question. The question that we discussed is a system currently designed in major cities, is that really enforceable.? Is it possible to enforce it? Our answer is with preliminary information that we are just getting back with the occupancy study and the purpose of enforcement is to change here and collect more. I believe when people have good intentions, enforcement still doesn’t work. Why not? Because demand in these buildings persist and is growing. Mike made a great point about the USPS. It's true from every carrier. The carriers are not causing demand. We are. We as consumers want more ecommerce deliveries. The growth at 15% has been happening for the past 11 years. It means that the amount of deliveries will increase in the next five years. When you look at what's causing this, which is consumer demand, can you enforce the way out of that? Can you go back in time to where there were tons of capacity where people did not receive e-commerce delivery in these quantities. The answer is, no. It’s not enforceable. And you see many examples in the headlines. It was in the City of New York. There is an article about a mayor in Florida doing the same thing. Basically, I'm going to lay down here on the ground and I'm going to ticket these guys until they stop it. Well, it won't stop because I have one police car assigned to every corner.
We still have not only persistent but growing demands. I want to throw some kudos to the city of Seattle. They are looking at an alternate path. Instead of saying that they are going to enforce their way out of this and ignoring this change of circumstance. It's not just the demand of e-commerce and trucks, it's additional demand for curb space for your short delivery drops by the uber-esque passenger movement. It’s also the growth of the populations. You've got thousands of customers where in the same footprint, you have a few hundred. As cities become more dense and eCom continues to grow, it is not possible for any regime of enforcement to change behavior.
Anne Goodchild
That's our philosophy in the approach in the urban for lab that we have taken. As Barb mentioned there are examples of others who might have taken an enforcement approach. But with the insight we have, we do not think that is the best solution.
Barb Ivanov
It’s unlikely. I see Dan Smith talking about autonomous vehicles are going to change the need for curb space. They will use all other types of methods in delivering packages to people. We are in a dynamic environment, but certainly the demand for truck load and unload space is only increasing.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. Great discussion there. Another question for Barb and Anne, has Amazon been approached? And if they have, did they indicate why they haven't been interested in the research center?
Barb Ivanov
We have been in conversations. We are still having conversations with Amazon. We have a very close connection and we have nothing to announce today.
Jennifer Symoun
All right. Thank you. Another question for both of you. With the increasing focus on internet based shopping and the declining popularity of the private auto should the use of streets be reexamined and the priority of the auto either eliminated or given less significant importance. The highest priority should be given to the bike riders and transit. This line of reasoning would lead to next focus being deliveries and the remaining if any could be utilized for peds and if the local area wants private autos. How and where are these discussions included in the last 50 foot research questions?
Barb Ivanov
Anne said something that I think it's really important. That is, if you want to have a walkable neighborhood, you are probably going to have a lot less cars and more trucks. Instead of you driving to the grocery store there will be a week’s worth of groceries coming to you. They are going to come to you in your walkable neighborhood. They are coming into the restaurant that is right next door. The relationship between a desired pedestrian or bike friendly area means to achieve that you are more likely to have more trucks and fewer passenger cars.
Anne Goodchild
I would add that we increasingly are seeing goods in very small loads and small packages can be delivered with cars, like Amazon Flex. We are seeing that happening. So, I think one of the effects of these changes is a bit of blurring between what used to be a much more rigid barrier between freight or commercial vehicles and always thinking about those as trucks or very heavy vehicles, and passenger cars. With automation, we may see the ability to integrate some of those smaller package deliveries into vehicles that are already moving on the network. I think one of the exciting changes is that we will ask us to reconsider how we think about those classes of vehicles and then how we accommodate them on the street as well as on the curb. How do we help really create environments that people want to be in and live in? Our partnership with SDOT, that is how we have access to the range of expertise and responsibility areas and can engage in quite broad conversations.
We certainly don’t want to think of this as only a freight problem. We don't want to think of this as only a freight problem. It's an urban living challenge. These are the logistics of life. They respond to changes that we might think of a personal behavior changes. Shopping, influences of the freight system. We need to all be thinking about that integrated system. Not putting trucks into one category and thinking of those as very separate from a transit network or shared mobility services. That's a part of what we are looking for in solutions to these challenges.
Chris Eaves
This is Chris. We have talked about getting our inventory beginning to understand our deficit and where we need more loading. As we do that, we come in with information on what the needs are and how we can balance the transit and other modal needs to make sure that we can still get an economical and vibrant city as Anne has been mentioning. We are not all the way through yet. It's important for us to have information that we need before we start making declarations that could intimately change how we operate in the downtown area. I am saying this in a sense that I want to be careful about. In the other sense, I’d love to be done right this second and have all the answers. As we grow and as all these other cities began to grow, the problem is simply exacerbating itself.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. I have another question for everyone. Are there any efforts by cities or communities. or research on distributing deliveries throughout 24 hours of day? For instance, deliveries at CBDs may be less problematic if done during non-business hours.
Anne Goodchild
I think this was also mentioned in the chat box. There have been thorough detailed research looking at off hours deliveries, it’s not quite the same as 24 hours. This has been led by Jose Holguin-Veras at RPI in collaboration with the New York City DOT and some funding I believe from FHWA. That has been replicated in several cities. Certainly where it’s possible, we see some of that happening within the marketplace. Some of the benefits that were identified through those studies, the industry sees itself as shifting. I think what is important is that we think about a real portfolio of solutions. What we are seeking isn't one tool that will fix these challenges alone. Even individual tools or strategies may be less or more effective in certain places or maybe not appropriate in certain places. I think what we want to do is certainly brainstorm and look for solutions but also test them and understand their impact in a robust, experimental way. We have a very good list of possible solutions. We really want to test those and understand them. We want have evidence to anticipate how we are going to modify the system. That's really been the focus of our work. Testing and evaluation. As Chris mentioned, doing that before we implement those sorts of changes. That's been the focus of our work. We certainly are not excluding quite a number of possible solutions.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you let's see here. Has there been any research on limiting competition among delivery companies, or incentivizing load sharing?
Barb Ivanov
There has been considerable information and pilot testing conducted in the EU on the idea of having consolidation centers at the perimeter of a city area, having multiple carriers and multiple distribution firms sort of stop at that place and with the consolidation centers so that they bundle the items for trucks and try to get more full truckloads in and out of the actual city. In the last five years, I think they have tested that in six or seven cities. We now have real data about what that works well or not. I was one of the planners of a workshop that looked at different research where failures taught us great lessons. This is one of the notable group of research activities that led to understanding that even in the EU were there were high-level subsidies offered for these, they didn't persist after the subsidy was a longer available. The market itself did not accept the additional charge for additional handling for this type of activity in what is a more managed and regulated environment in the EU and Western Europe than you might find in the United States. In the U.S., we have public warehouses by which I mean they are owned privately but they are available for multiple customers so that activity does exist here. It is carried out in the private marketplace. When it makes financial sense for parties, they will take advantage of that. I hope that provides an alternate look. I am saying is where they were implemented in the EU in the last 4 or 5 years, you do not see them persisting after federal subsidies were no longer available.
Jennifer Symoun
Thank you. We are running out of time. We do have a few questions left. I will try to see we can get through the remaining questions. I don't know if the presenters are able to stay over just a few minutes to try to get some answers. Is equity, both modal and human, a consideration and if yes can you provide a specific response to how it is explicitly included in your work?
Barb Ivanov
I think that’s a very important question and I referenced it briefly when we talked about the goals of the Urban Freight Lab. One of those is to reduce the number of failed first deliveries. I want to focus on that for a moment. I said at the time in my presentation that there are neighborhoods known to delivery firms were some communities do not receive deliveries that could be very convenient to them and add to the quality of life because of either the high rate of theft or other conditions. I think that matters. I think that when the urban area itself has a commitment to all neighborhoods being able to access the same level of service, I think that is an important and worthy goal that many cities and city elected officials would agree with. Attacking this problem, realizing that it is not a one-size- fits-all, but with his new information leading us to understand that different portions of the community has different levels of access to purchase and receiving those purchases in the most convenient way for them, allows us with that new data and information to say what new solutions are able to solve that. That doesn’t mean they are always low-income neighborhoods, but some of them are.
--Transcription ended due to seminar running over allotted time.--
