Publications

Summary:
There are more than 212,000 at-grade railroad crossings in the United States. Several feature paths running adjacent to the railroad tracks, and crossing a highway; they serve urban areas, recreational activities, light rail station access, and a variety of other purposes. Some of these crossings see a disproportionate number of violations and conflicts between rail, vehicles, and pedestrians and bikes.

Summary:
The growth of home deliveries, lower inventory levels and just-in-time deliveries drive the fragmentation of freight flows, increased frequency, more delivery addresses and smaller volumes. This leads to trucks inefficiently loaded and consequently more trucks in the road contributing to the growing congestion in cities. According to a study by INRIX and the Texas Transportation Institute, travelers in the U.S.

Summary:
There are more than 212,000 at-grade railroad crossings in the US. A number of them features paths running adjacent to the railroad tracks, and crossing a highway; serving urban areas, recreational activities, light rail station access and a variety of other purposes. Some of these crossings see a disproportionate number of violations and conflicts between rail, vehicles and pedestrians and bikes.

Summary:
Purpose: The increasing growth of e-commerce has been putting pressure on local governments to rethink how they manage street curb parking and alley operations for trucks and other delivery vehicles.

Summary:
  With the rapid development of ports in China, competition for cargo is growing. The ability of a port to attract hinterland traffic is affected by many factors, including distance to the hinterland destinations. This paper studies the effects of distance on import cargo flows from a port to its hinterland. Two major findings are reported.

Summary:
The rapid expansion of ecommerce has flooded American cities with delivery trucks, just as those cities are experiencing booming population growth. Retailers need a more efficient, reliable, and cost-effective way to deliver goods in increasingly crowded urban environments. For their part, cities like Seattle want to minimize traffic congestion, both sustain quality of life for residents and ensure a smooth flow of goods and services.

Summary:
This paper presents an analytical model to contrast the carbon emissions from a number of goods delivery methods. This includes individuals travelling to the store by car, and delivery trucks delivering to homes. While the impact of growing home delivery services has been studied with combinatorial approaches, those approaches do not allow for systematic conclusions regarding when the service provides net benefit.

Summary:
A 20% e-commerce compound annual growth rate (CAGR) would more than double goods deliveries in 5 years. If nothing changes, this could double delivery trips in cities; thereby doubling the demand for load/unload spaces. Innovation is needed to manage scarce curbs, alleys, and private loading bay space in the new world of on-demand transportation, 1-hour e-commerce deliveries, and coming autonomous vehicle technologies.

Summary:
Existing approaches dealing with customer perception data have two fundamental challenges: heterogeneity of customer perceptions and simultaneous interrelationships between attitudes that explain customer behavior. This paper aims to provide practitioners with a methodology of service quality (SQ) evaluation based on public transit customers behavioral theory and advanced market segmentation that deals with these two fundamental challenges.

Summary:
This paper evaluates whether or not there is a sprawling tendency to the spatial patterns of warehouse establishments in the Chicago and Phoenix metropolitan areas. The trend of warehouses to move away from the urban centers to more suburban and exurban areas is referred to as “Logistics Sprawl”.

Summary:
Urban Freight Lab’s foundational report is the first assessment in any American city of the privately-owned and operated elements of the Final 50 Feet of goods delivery supply chains (the end of the supply chain, where delivery drivers must locate both parking and end customers). These include curb parking spaces, private truck freight bays and loading docks, street design, traffic control, and delivery policies and operations within buildings.

Summary:
Unresolved safety issues caused by truck parking shortages in high-demand locations are of keen importance to the State Departments of Transportation (DOTs) participating in the Regional PacTrans Center and to the thousands of trucking companies and drivers using the Interstate 5 (I-5) and Interstate 90 (I-90) corridors.

Summary:
Two converging trends – the rise of e‐commerce and urban population growth – challenge cities facing competing uses for road, curb and alley space. The University of Washington has formed a living Urban Freight Lab to solve city logistics problems that cross private and public sector boundaries.

Summary:
Urban Freight Lab’s foundational report is the first assessment in any American city of the privately-owned and operated elements of the Final 50 Feet of goods delivery supply chains (the end of the supply chain, where delivery drivers must locate both parking and end customers). These include curb parking spaces, private truck freight bays and loading docks, street design, traffic control, and delivery policies and operations within buildings.

Summary:
Urban freight deliveries are increasingly challenged in dense urban areas, particularly where delivery trucks are required to meet delivery time windows. Depending on the route characteristics, Electric Assist (EA) cargo bikes may serve as an economic and environmentally sustainable alternative to delivery trucks. In this paper, the cost trade-offs between a box delivery truck and an EA cargo bikes are compared.