Publications

Summary:
While e-commerce continues to grow as a proportion of retail sales, consumers still largely rely on vehicle travel to shop. At the same time, the “15-minute city” concept is gaining traction, suggesting that the livability and sustainability of urban areas will improve if essential goods and services are all located in close proximity to residential areas.

Summary:
This paper assesses the public acceptance of Autonomous Delivery Vehicles (ADVs) by extending the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), incorporating subjective norms, environmental concerns, and hedonic motivations alongside the original TAM constructs. The perceived security risk of theft is also defined and included in the model to explore its moderating role. Data was collected from an online survey of 1567 participants in different cities in Iran.

Summary:
Problem, research strategy, and findings The transportation sector is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. To articulate how cities may combat rising emissions, municipalities throughout the country have produced climate action and sustainability plans that outline strategies to reduce their carbon footprints from transportation.

Summary:
Commercial electric vehicles (EVs) have increasingly gained interest from urban freight companies in the past decade due to the introduction of economic and policy drivers. Although these factors promote urban freight electrification, some barriers hinder the transition to fully electric fleets, such as the significant monetary investment required to replace the current internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEV) and the lack of readily available electric freight vehicles.

Summary:
Purpose Despite large bodies of research related to the impacts of e-commerce on last-mile logistics and sustainability, there has been limited effort to evaluate urban freight using an equity lens. Therefore, this study proposes a modeling framework that enables researchers and planners to estimate the baseline equity performance of a major e-commerce platform and evaluate equity impacts of possible urban freight management strategies.

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:
In 2023, Portland was awarded a U.S. Department of Transportation SMART grant to pilot a Zero-Emission Delivery Zone (ZEDZ). Funding for this Stage One SMART grant will allow PBOT to trial changing three to five truck loading zones into “Zero-Emission Delivery” loading zones in downtown Portland.

Summary:
Three different data types were obtained from Oregon State Driving and Bicycling Simulator Laboratory for purpose of this report and they are as follow: Speed data consists of subject number, average speed, minimum speed, and all the independent variables. Speed data were collected based on the truck’s speed while driving through a certain scenario (out of 24).

Summary:
Electric cargo cycles are often considered a viable alternative mode for delivering goods in an urban area. However, cities in the U.S. are struggling to regulate cargo cycles, with most authorities applying the same rules used for motorized vehicles or traditional bikes. One reason is the lack of understanding of the relationships between existing regulations, transport infrastructure, and cargo cycle parking and driving behaviors.

Summary:
We’ve dug into how digitization continues to spark new developments in the urban freight landscape across the private and public sectors alike — with cities lagging behind digitization veterans like Amazon. As Urban Freight Lab members noted at the fall meeting, it’s understandable why the private sector is ahead. Digitization helps companies improve operations toward lowering costs, saving time and money, and keeping customers satisfied.

Summary:
We have digitization to thank for today’s urban freight landscape. Digitization has long been the backbone of things we now take for granted — from TNCs (Transportation Network Companies) Uber and Lyft to online shopping and the complex supply chain needed to make that ecommerce happen. Digitization is what gives ecommerce’s biggest player — Amazon — visibility into its packages and enables it to deliver faster and more reliably than ever. So digitalization isn’t new.

Summary:
Urban freight denotes vehicle and commodity flows in an urban environment. These flows depend on a complex set of relationships among various stakeholders. In the last decades, urban freight has experienced an incredible pace of evolution, which has occurred due to various technological factors. One example is the ubiquity of internet access and the advance in information technology, leading to e-commerce adoption.

Summary:
With the dramatic and recent growth in demand for curbside pick-up and drop-off by ride-hailing services, as well as online shopping and associated deliveries, balancing the needs of roadway users is increasingly critical. Local governments lack tools to evaluate the impacts of curb management strategies that prioritize different users’ needs.

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:
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, online and in-store shopping behaviors changed significantly. As the pandemic subsides, key questions are why those changes happened, whether they are expected to stay, and, if so, to what extent. We answered those questions by analyzing a quasi-longitudinal survey dataset of the Puget Sound residents (Washington, U.S.).