In the Media

"Overwhelmingly it's been a story of resilience and adaptation that I think the supply chain and package carrier industry deserves credit for," Anne Goodchild says.

Anne Goodchild: Overwhelmingly, you know, it's been a story of resilience and adaptation that I think the supply chain and the package carrier industry deserves a lot of credit.

Stockpiling during the pandemic doesn’t seem to be necessary, says our director Anne Goodchild. Supply chains’ response to the pandemic “have been remarkably adaptable, resilient and creative."

“In dense urban areas, a bike can actually move more quickly than a car,” says Anne Goodchild.

In October, researchers at the Urban Freight Lab found that delivery trucks spent 28% of their delivery time cruising, looking for a parking space.

While some multifamily building dwellers would prefer the convenience of packages delivered to their door, a secure common pickup area is the practical alternative for residents to safely receive parcels when they’re not home, says Andisheh Ranjbari, manager of the Urban Freight Lab.

By Walther Ploos van AmstelThe Urban Freight Lab has developed an Urban Goods Delivery Toolkit, designed as a one-stop-shop for cities and transportation researchers across the U.S. to improve functionality in the Final 50 Feet segment, increasing load/unload parking space productivity and reducing failed first delivery attempts.

"I developed the group to solve urban freight transportation challenges because I saw a need for partnerships and real collaboration that, as a researcher, I couldn’t access before. I saw a lot of research going on that was quite disconnected from practice and cities. That — not engaging early enough with partners to realize what the real obstacles to those implementations were — looked to me like wasted energy.”

By Linda BakerA coalition of Southern California government organizations has released an in-depth report examining some of the deleterious impacts associated with last-mile freight transportation.A primary purpose of the study is “to raise awareness of the complexities, costs, environmental impacts and local community impacts of that final stage of delivery,” said Steven Lambert, a spokesperson for the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the coalition that developed the Last-Mile Freight Study.

One recent study in Seattle found that delivery drivers spend at least 28% of their time looking for parking.

“Drones are remarkably energy efficient machines, particularly when compared to the current fleet of over-the-road trucks,” said Anne Goodchild, a professor at the University of Washington focusing on supply chain and logistics.

Now two years into the study, the Urban Freight Lab, which focuses on supply chain and transportation logistics in cities, has something for the public to try out so that researchers can study consumer behavior and package delivery patterns.

When she’s not managing new market expansion initiatives for Amazon, the University of Washington alumna volunteers with K–12 outreach programs, encouraging girls and all young people of color to see themselves as tomorrow’s engineers, doctors, scientists and computer programmers.

“When you and I say ‘intermodal,’ particularly in this e-commerce focused world, that’s not the same thing that intermodal data would be collected to capture,” said Anne Goodchild.

At Seattle’s Municipal Tower, which houses more than 5,000 tenants, Anne Goodchild’s team installed a parcel locker on the first floor. Carriers stored packages in a reserved locker space instead of scouring the building for the right doorstep. The locker reduced delivery dwell times, which originally averaged 30 minutes, by nearly 80%.