Publications

Summary:
As ecommerce and urban deliveries spike, cities grapple with managing urban freight more actively. To manage urban deliveries effectively, city planners and policy makers need to better understand driver behaviors and the challenges they experience in making deliveries. In this study, we collected data on commercial vehicle (CV) driver behaviors by performing ridealongs with various logistics carriers.

Summary:
This study is sponsored by Amazon, Bellevue Transportation department, Challenge Seattle, King County Metro, Seattle Department of Transportation, Sound Transit, and Uber, with support from the Mobility Innovation Center at UW CoMotion. Population and extended economic growth in many Seattle neighborhoods are driving increased demand for private car travel along with transportation services such as ridehailing and on-demand delivery.

Summary:
Through structured interviews with public agency and private company staff and a review of existing pilot project evaluations and curb management guidelines, this study surveys contemporary approaches to curb space management in 14 U.S. cities and documents the challenges and opportunities associated with them. A total of 17 public agencies (including public works departments, transportation agencies, and metropolitan planning organizations) in every census region of the U.S.

Summary:
As e-commerce and urban deliveries spike, cities grapple with managing urban freight more actively. To manage urban deliveries effectively, city planners and policy makers need to better understand driver behaviors and the challenges they experience in making deliveries. In this study, we collected data on commercial vehicle (CV) driver behaviors by performing ridealongs with various logistics carriers.

Summary:
This study aims to identify factors correlated with dwell time for commercial vehicles (the time that delivery workers spend performing out-of-vehicle activities while parked). While restricting vehicle dwell time is widely used to manage commercial vehicle parking behavior, there is insufficient data to help assess the effectiveness of these restrictions, which makes it difficult for policymakers to account for the complexity of commercial vehicle parking behavior.

Summary:
The objectives of this project are to develop and implement a technology solution to support research, development, and demonstration of data processing techniques, models, simulations, a smart phone application, and a visual-confirmation system to: Reduce delivery vehicle parking seeking behavior by approximately 20% in the pilot test area, by returning current and predicted load/unload space occupancy information to users on a web-based and/or mobile platform, to inform real-time parking decis…

Summary:
The objectives of this project are to develop and implement a technology solution to support research, development, and demonstration of data processing techniques, models, simulations, a smart phone application, and a visual-confirmation system to: Reduce delivery vehicle parking seeking behavior by approximately 20% in the pilot test area, by returning current and predicted load/unload space occupancy information to users on a web-based and/or mobile platform, to inform real-time parking decis…

Summary:
Vehicles of all kinds compete for parking space along the curb in Seattle’s Greater Downtown area. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) manages use of the curb through several types of curb designations that regulate who can park in a space and for how long.

Summary:
Rapid urban growth puts pressure on local governments to rethink how they manage street curb parking. Competition for space among road users and lack of adequate infrastructure force delivery drivers either to search for vacant spaces or to park in unsuitable areas, which negatively impacts road capacity and causes inconvenience to other users of the road. The purpose of this paper is to advance research by providing data-based insight into what is actually happening at the curb.

Summary:
Like many congested cities, Seattle is grappling with how best to manage the increasing use of ride-hailing services by Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft. According to a 2018 Seattle Times analysis, TNC ridership in the Seattle region has grown to more than five times the level it was in the beginning of 2015, providing, on average, more than 91,000 rides a day in 2018. And the newspaper reports Uber and Lyft trips are heavily concentrated in the...

Summary:
There is not enough curb capacity, now. A recent curb parking utilization study in the City of Seattle indicated 90% or higher occupancy rates in Commercial Vehicle Load Zones (CVLZs) for some areas for much of the workday. The Final Fifty Feet is a new research field. The Final 50 Feet project is the first time that researchers have analyzed both the street network and cities’ vertical space as one unified goods delivery system. It focuses on: The use of...

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:
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:
The growth of freight activity is one of the results of urban population growth. The growth of freight means that more commercial vehicles must share finite infrastructure like alleys, loading docks, and yellow curb space. In this research project, curb space is studied in order to better understand the needs of commercial vehicles at the curb.

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.