Publications

Summary:
The last mile of delivery is undergoing major changes, experiencing new demand and new challenges. The rise in urban deliveries amid the societal impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected urban logistics. The level of understanding is increasing as cities and companies pilot strategies that pave the way for efficient urban freight practices.

Summary:
Freight load and unload facilities located off the public right-of-way are typically not documented in publicly available databases. Without detailed knowledge of these facilities, i.e. private freight load and unload infrastructure, cities are limited in their ability to complete system-wide freight planning and to comprehensively evaluate the total supply of load and unload spaces in the city.

Summary:
Bike facilities like bike lanes, bike trails, and neighborhood greenways have been the backbone of Seattle’s bike planning policy with the goal of promoting active transportation, reducing car dependence, improving social equity, and eliminating bike accidents.

Summary:
While recent urban planning efforts have focused on smart growth development and management of growth into developed areas, the research community has not examined the impacts of these development patterns on urban goods movement. Successful implementation of growth strategies has multiple environmental and social benefits, but it also raises the demand for intraurban goods movement, potentially increasing conflicts between modes of travel and worsening air quality.

Summary:
The examination of commercial pilot workload often requires the use of controlled simulated studies to identify causal effects. The specific scenarios to consider within a simulator study require an extensive understanding of the safety situations that can occur in flight while also considering the specific training that pilots are provided within a simulated environment.

Summary:
This report examines the relationship between Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) and safety from an urban perspective. Existing urban ITS systems are either system-level or site-level applications. System-level ITS, such as freeway management systems or traffic signal networks, address safety concerns only indirectly. These systems are designed to improve traffic flows and thus indirectly reduce collisions caused by congestion.

Summary:
Increased use of ridehailing leads to increased pick-up and drop-off activity. This may slow traffic or cause delays as vehicles increase curb use, conduct pick-up and drop-off activity directly in the travel lane, or slow to find and connect with passengers. How should cities respond to this change in an effort to keep travel lanes operating smoothly and efficiently?

Summary:
Imagine the frustration of searching for a misplaced item, like your house keys or wallet, before leaving for a night out. Now, picture a FedEx or Amazon delivery driver halfway through a tight morning route, struggling to locate a parcel due by 9 a.m. while parked right outside the customer’s address. These misloads — where shipments are accidentally loaded onto the wrong delivery route or vehicle — not only cause stress and lost time for the delivery driver but also...

Summary:
Although road infrastructure has been designed to accommodate human drivers’ physiology and psychology for over a century, human error has always been the main cause of traffic accidents. Consequently, Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) have been developed to mitigate human shortcomings. These automated functions are becoming more sophisticated allowing for Automated Driving Systems (ADS) to drive under an increasing number of road conditions.

Summary:
The Clean Trucks Program is a Clean Air Action Plan initiative currently being adopted by the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. This paper examines each of the Clean Trucks Program’s current requirements and estimates the impact on terminal operations. Using terminal operations data supplied by three terminal operating companies, we conduct a simple queuing analysis and present a regression model which allow us to consider the potential impact of the policy changes.

Summary:
Efforts to regulate the curb also suffer from a lack of publicly accessible data on both the demand and supply of curb space. Cities often do not have the technical expertise to develop a curb data collection and data-sharing strategy. In addition, the private individuals and companies that generate most of the curb-use data often withhold them from public use to protect proprietary information and personal user data. However, new uses of data sources, such as the Global Positioning System...

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:
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.