In the Media

September 11, 2020 — The University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab (UFL) in conjunction with smart locker provider Parcel Pending by Quadient and parking magnate REEF, recently launched an open-network smart locker system in Seattle’s Belltown area, offering the neighborhood free, accessible, safe, contact-free package pick-up.

Belltown residents will have an easier time receiving their packages with the launch of a smart locker system by the University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab (UFL) in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood in August.

New research from Anne Goodchild and Giacomo Dalla Chiara found that cruising for parking accounted for a whopping 28% of total delivery vehicle trip time. For the typical driver making 30 trips per tour, that's 1 hour and 10 minutes of wasted time.

It was at the Urban Freight Lab at the University of Washington that supply chain experts coined the increasingly used term "the last 50 feet of delivery."

A constant evolution is the best way to consider delivery’s future, thinks Anne Goodchild, the founding director of the University of Washington’s Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center.

A research team led by Giacomo Dalla Chiara from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, has published the results of a study simulating the performance of different operational scenarios for cargo delivery — a truck-only scenario and a cargo-cycle with mobile hubs scenario— under different delivery demand and parking conditions.

“A drone can’t really compete with a very full truck making 100 deliveries in a fairly small space,” said Anne Goodchild. “The farther apart those customers are, the less room for consolidation, the more competitive a drone can be.” 

The challenges inherent in urban logistics aren't new. "But they've been exacerbated by current trends," says Anne Goodchild, professor and founding director of the Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center at the University of Washington.

The pandemic has led many cities to quickly open up streets to pedestrians.. “The curb is this incredibly flexible space, yet we typically think everything that happens there is permanent,” says Anne Goodchild, who runs the Urban Freight Lab, a program that seeks to understand urban delivery, logistics, and transportation. “This moment gives us an opportunity.”

Dr. Anne Goodchild formed the Urban Freight Lab, a working group of academics, cities and industry leaders, in part to study "the final 50 feet," a term that describes the last leg of a package's journey from a delivery truck to the customer. Package theft and failed deliveries are two major concerns, she says.

Bowen Island Municipality (BIM) worked with University of Washington researcher Fiete Krutein to investigate scenarios that could result in an evacuations and the locally available vessels that could help. 

Cities have seen a dramatic increase in the volume of freight and deliveries moving on their streets. As residents stay home, often by medical necessity, safe and efficient goods movement is critical to ensuring everyone has access to essential items like food and paper goods. Consequently, more people are ordering online goods – online retailers and delivery companies have seen nearly a 50 percent jump in orders over the past two months.

With all of those trucks heading out into suburbia to deliver your latest gadget, fashion find, or book, is online shopping terrible for the environment?

Research by Urban Freight Lab of Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center (University of Washington) revealed a lack of an established and widely accepted definition for the concept of consolidation centers or microhubs. 

Anne Goodchild, a professor at the University of Washington, has found that consolidating deliveries in one area produces fewer climate-harming emissions than the same people driving back and forth to multiple stores.