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  • "Bicycle Research: Cargo Bikes and Bike-Truck Interactions"
    Cargo e-bikes are two-, three-, or four-wheeled vehicles with cargo-carrying capacity. Since they are human-powered and often have an electric pedal assist, they are an alternative mode of delivering goods in dense urban areas. They present several advantages over the traditional modes of urban freight: they are more agile in navigating traffic, they occupy less space, and can potentially park anywhere. However, previous studies and pilots showed mixed results. The Urban Freight Lab has been collecting and analyzing data from cargo bike pilot studies and simulations to address questions on their operational efficiency, sustainability, and safety. Bike-truck conflicts are interactions between a bicyclist and another road user such that at least one of the parties must change direction or speed to avoid collisions.
Student Thesis and Dissertations
Published: 2020
Authors: Dr. Ed McCormack, Theodore Cheung, Katie Sheehy, Christine Bae
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.
Keywords:
Bikeshare
Presentation
Published: 2022
Journal/Book: 9th International Urban Freight Conference, Long Beach, May 2022
Summary:
Micro-consolidation implementations and pairing with soft transportation modes offer practical, economic, environmental, and cultural benefits. Early implementations of micro consolidation practices were tested but cities need to understand their implications in terms of efficiency and sustainability. This study includes a research scan and proposes a typology of micro-consolidation practices.
Student Thesis and Dissertations
Published: 2021
Authors: Şeyma Güneş
Summary:
The demand for home deliveries has seen a drastic increase, especially in cities, putting urban freight systems under pressure. As more people move to urban areas and change consumer behaviors to shop online, busy delivery operations cause externalities such as congestion and air pollution. Micro-consolidation implementations and their possible pairing with soft transportation modes offer practical, economic, environmental, and cultural benefits.
Paper
Published: 2020
Authors: Dr. Anne GoodchildManali ShethDr. Ed McCormack, Hisham Jashami, Douglas Cobb, David S. Hurtwitz
Journal/Book: Transportation Research Part F: Traffic Psychology and Behaviour
Summary:
With growing freight operations within the United States, there continues to be a push for urban streets to accommodate trucks during loading and unloading operations. Currently, many urban locations do not provide loading and unloading zones, which results in trucks parking in places that can obstruct roadway infrastructure designated to vulnerable road users (e.g., pedestrians and cyclists).
Report
Published: 2020
Summary:
This study performed an empirical analysis to evaluate the implementation of a cargo e-bike delivery system pilot tested by the United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) in Seattle, Washington. During the pilot, a cargo e-bike with a removable cargo container was used to perform last-mile deliveries in downtown Seattle. Cargo containers were pre-loaded daily at the UPS Seattle depot and loaded onto a trailer, which was then carried to a parking lot in downtown.
Paper
Published: 2020
Authors: Dr. Giacomo Dalla Chiara, André Romano Alho, Cheng Cheng, Moshe Ben-Akiva, Lynette Cheah
Journal/Book: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Summary:
Urban deliveries are traditionally carried out with vans or trucks. These vehicles tend to face parking difficulties in dense urban areas, leading to traffic congestion. Smaller and nimbler vehicles by design, such as cargo-cycles, struggle to compete in distance range and carrying capacity. However, a system of cargo-cycles complemented with strategically located cargo-storing hubs can overcome some limitations of the cargo-cycles.