In the Media

“After 36 hours, the value of the fish plummets. It’s not considered fresh anymore,” said CEE research associate professor Ed McCormack, who helped facilitate the program. “From a cargo point of view, fresh fish is expensive and fragile and it has to move really fast.”

Barb Ivanov, the director of the Urban Freight Lab at the Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center of the University of Washington, discusses solving freight system problems and ways the public- and private-sector overlap.

Inbound Logistics recently caught up Bill Keough to find out how the University of Washington is addressing the talent gap in the supply chain/logistics sector.

Students and professors from the University of Tromsø and the the University of Washington in Seattle, will take the long salmon routes in Norway. The creative student collaboration – which will look into how to make the roads safer, more accessible, and efficient – is called “The Seafood Industry Transportation Challenge.”

New Urban Freight Lab study shines spotlight on some unique benefits of parcel lockers.

For the first time in the United States or Europe, the Urban Freight Lab led a test of a common carrier locker system in a public building.

Due to heavy traffic, cities are on the front line of climate change. Purpose-driven collaborations such as UPS's partnership with the Urban Freight Lab offer sustainable means of commerce and transportation.

SCTL's Urban Freight Lab conducted a pilot study at Seattle Municipal Tower in April. “We anticipated that if we had a locker system, we would reduce the delivery time,” said Ph.D. student Haena Kim, who led the pilot study. “But what we saw was a 78% reduction in time. That’s astonishing."

The Urban Freight Lab and Seattle Dept. of Transportation found e-commerce and urban growth has led to a dramatic increase of vehicles circling the urban core. Without steps to correct inefficiencies, the number of truck trips in the downtown area of Seattle could double by 2023.

Drones offer an interesting alternative when delivering goods. "We've brought the technology to a point where it opens up some really new possibilities that are exciting," Anne Goodchild, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington, said.

Driverless trucks are advancing quickly, and they could revolutionize how companies move all the stuff we buy. Barbara Ivanov weighs in.

The issue of ships switching from diesel to other sources of fuel is an intriguing one. "Changing to alternative fuels means changing the vessels and their engine technology," Anne Goodchild, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington, said.

"We are at the edge of a revolution, there's a wave of change that you can see hitting both passenger transport as well as freight," SCTL Director Anne Goodchild told CNBC.

In a 2013 study conducted at the University of Washington, civil engineers Anne Goodchild and Erica Wygonik found that ordering groceries online could reduce carbon emissions anywhere from 20 to 75 percent.

The city of Seattle has partnered with the University of Washington's Urban Freight Lab to collect data that will help them tackle the final 50 feet from a city-owned curb to someone’s front door.