Report

The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System (Final Report)

Publication Date: 2018

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.

Goods delivery is an essential but little-noticed activity in urban areas. For the last 40 years, deliveries have been mostly performed by a private sector shipping industry that operates within general city traffic conditions. However, in recent years e-commerce has created a rapid increase in deliveries, which implies an explosion of activity in the future.

Meeting current and future demand is creating unprecedented challenges for shippers to meet both increased volumes and increasing customer expectations for efficient and timely delivery. Anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing demand is overwhelming goods delivery infrastructure and operations. Delivery vehicles parked in travel lanes, unloading taking place on crowded sidewalks, and commercial truck noise during late night and early morning hours are familiar stories in urban areas.

These conditions are noticeable throughout the City of Seattle as our population and employment rapidly increase. However, goods delivery issues are particularly problematic in Seattle’s high-density areas of Downtown, Belltown, South Lake Union, Pioneer Square, First Hill, Capitol Hill and Queen Anne, described as Seattle’s “Center City”. Urban goods transportation makes our economy and quality of life possible.

As the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) responds to the many travel challenges of a complex urban environment, we recognize that goods delivery needs to be better understood and supported to retain the vitality and livability of our busiest neighborhoods.

U.S. cities do not have much information about the urban goods delivery system. While public agencies have data on city streets, public transportation and designated curbside parking, the “final 50 feet” in goods delivery also utilizes private vehicles, private loading facilities, and privately-owned and operated buildings outside the traditional realm of urban planning.

Bridging the information gap between the public and private sectors requires a new way of thinking about urban systems. Specifically, it requires trusted data sharing between public and private partners, and a data-driven approach to asking and answering the right questions, to successfully meet modern urban goods delivery needs.

The Urban Freight Lab (UFL) provides a standing forum to solve a range of short-term as well as long-term strategic urban goods problem solving, that provides evidence of effectiveness before strategies are widely implemented in the City.

Authors: Urban Freight Lab

Recommended Citation:
Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center. (2018) The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System.

Paper

Simulation-Based Analysis of Different Curb Space Type Allocations on Curb Performance

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URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/21680566.2023.2212324

Publication: Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics

Volume: 11 (1)

Pages: 1384-1405

Publication Date: 2023

Summary:

Curbspace is a limited resource in urban areas. Delivery, ridehailing and passenger vehicles must compete for spaces at the curb. Cities are increasingly adjusting curb rules and allocating curb spaces for uses other than short-term paid parking, yet they lack the tools or data needed to make informed decisions. In this research, we analyze and quantify the impacts of different curb use allocations on curb performance through simulation. Three metrics are developed to evaluate the performance of the curb, covering productivity and accessibility of passengers and goods, and CO2 emissions. The metrics are calculated for each scenario across a range of input parameters (traffic volume, parking rate, vehicle dwell time, and street design speed) and compared to a baseline scenario. This work can inform policy decisions by providing municipalities tools to analyze various curb management strategies and choose the ones that produce results more in line with their policy goals.

Authors: Thomas MaxnerDr. Andisheh RanjbariŞeyma Güneş, Chase Dowling (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Recommended Citation:
Thomas Maxner, Andisheh Ranjbari, Chase P. Dowling & Şeyma Güneş (2023) Simulation-based analysis of different curb space type allocations on curb performance, Transportmetrica B: Transport Dynamics, 11:1, 1384-1405, DOI: 10.1080/21680566.2023.2212324

Revenue-Related Strategies for New Mobility Options

The Urban Freight Lab (UFL) is partnering with ECONorthwest and Cityfi to develop a research product for the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) on the topic of revenue strategies for new mobility options. The team will analyze the public sector’s potential role in using revenue-related strategies to encourage or discourage new mobility options in personal mobility and goods delivery.

Transportation services often operate in publicly owned and publicly managed spaces, make use of public rights-of-way, and produce mobility benefits for a broad array of users. The public sector is responsible for managing and pricing those rights-of-way and delivering services in an equitable way. Recovering the public costs of management and provisioning from private transportation services and their users is essential for maintaining public benefit. And sometimes the public sector needs to help private services to thrive.

The research methodology for this project is designed to be iterative: activities and research will build on previous research and activities. We will begin with the development of a revenue framework informed by a broad review of the literature, a policy scan, and workshop sessions with transportation and other public agency representatives that regulate and collect revenue from new mobility services. The framework will include revenue-related strategies based on:

- (a) identifiable need
- (b) nexus to cost responsibility
- (c) policy outcome
- (d) other factors such as access to technology and ease of administration.

We will then take a deeper dive into each personal mobility mode and goods delivery market segment to apply the framework. We will also provide examples to illustrate the opportunities and challenges of a variety of revenue strategies. We will also conduct additional workshops with public agency representatives, industry representatives, and other transportation stakeholders. Finally, we will create a spreadsheet-based Revenue Calculator that allows interested individuals to estimate how much revenue could be generated using different assumptions and strategies. The work will culminate with the development of a Toolkit that will be submitted to NCHRP and made available for wider distribution.

Objectives

The objective of this research is to develop a toolkit for transportation agencies that addresses how revenue-related strategies (e.g., taxes, fees, and subsidies) support policy objectives and shape the deployment of new mobility options. The toolkit will assist agencies to develop, evaluate, implement, and administer revenue-related strategies for new mobility options that transport people and goods.

The research will include:

New and evolving transportation options for people and goods that interact with the existing built environment and travel throughout an area
Incentives and disincentives that result from revenue-related strategies
Policy implications of revenue-related strategies for new mobility options including revenue potential, mobility, travel demand, safety, equity, environment, economic development, infrastructure design, operations, and maintenance
Mechanisms for revenue collection and distribution for different mobility options in different scenarios
The ease and difficulty of implementing and enforcing different revenue-related strategies for new mobility options
Potential roles and responsibilities of governmental organizations and private entities

Last-Mile Freight Curb Access: Digitizing the Last Mile of Urban Goods to Improve Curb Access and Use

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) awarded a $2 million grant under its SMART (Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation) grant program to support the development of the Last-Mile Freight Curb Access Program: Digitizing the Last Mile of Urban Goods to Improve Curb Access and Utilization, a collaboration between the Urban Freight Lab, Seattle Department of Transportation, and Open Mobility Foundation. This project will develop sensor-based technology solutions that address to transportation problems, enabling commercial vehicles to make faster, safer, and more efficient deliveries with reduced vehicle emissions.

The Last Mile Freight Curb Access Program focuses on providing commercial vehicle drivers with real-time information to park legally and expedite deliveries. Research from a 2019 Urban Freight Lab study showed that more than 40% of commercial vehicles in downtown Seattle park in unauthorized locations. Another study showed that equipping commercial vehicles with real-time parking availability and load zone information could reduce their “cruising” time by nearly 30%. The project aims to make information about curbside regulations digitized and more accessible to commercial drivers, and leverage this data to improve regulations.

Other cities including Portland, San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and Miami-Dade County have also received SMART grants to implement similar technology-based solutions for improving curb access.

Background

Since 2010, the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has been a national leader in data-driven curbside management by using parking occupancy data to set on-street parking rates. We proposed to extend our data-driven pricing and curb literacy to a new use: designated commercial vehicle load zones (CVLZ) and the commercial vehicle permit (CVP). Our plan is to establish new CVP policies in close collaboration with urban freight companies, adjacent businesses, and other critical stakeholders; implement a digital CVP built on the Curb Data Specification (CDS) that enables capture of curb utilization measurements and communicates demand management policies; and transform our legacy digital curb inventory to the national CDS standard.

Strategies

To address these challenges, SDOT proposes a SMART project that will use a combination of digital technologies coupled with targeted outreach. This approach will be implemented through three key strategies:

Engage with local businesses and urban freight companies to understand challenges and build a foundation of trust SDOT will engage with a variety of stakeholders including local neighborhood businesses, commercial vehicle users from large carriers, and commercial vehicle permit (CVP) holders from small and local businesses. The goal is to build trust and work collaboratively with our users to modernize and improve our existing CVP to create a system that works for urban freight companies, local businesses, and benefits the community at large.
Prototype a digital CVP and use findings to modernize and scale the system SDOT will conduct a vendor procurement to prototype and assess a wireless vehicle-to-curb infrastructure (V2I) communication system, built on top of the Curb Data Specification (CDS) standard as a new way to manage our CVP. Data collected through this prototype will be leveraged by the UFL to conduct research to develop standardized data collection efforts for commercial curb use and create new data-driven policy and permit recommendations.
Collaborate with a national cohort of cities implementing the Curb Data Specification SDOT will partner with the Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) and collaborate with a national cohort of OMF member cities to support the shared objectives in how CDS can help cities and companies pilot and scale dynamic curb use. SDOT will share lessons from Stage 1 prototyping with OMF cohort cities to strengthen all CDS-related SMART grant projects and better position proven technologies to be implemented at scale for a Stage 2 project. SDOT is uniquely positioned to deliver a successful Stage 1 project focusing on commercial vehicle curb access and utilization given our existing CVP and leadership in data driven curbside management. Specifically, this project will directly address the SMART goals of equity and access, partnerships, and integration and build the foundation for dramatic improvements in safety, reliability, and climate in Stage 2. Our goal is that the Stage 1 learnings will allow us to scale a digital CVP for citywide adoption in Stage 2, thus promoting interoperability of technology solutions to improve curb access for commercial curb users citywide. Our approach centers on stakeholder and community partnerships, data-driven assessment, and technical capacity-building. Potential outcomes for testing and implementation in Stage 2 include updated policies or curb allocations that might address inequities through deeper understanding of the variety of commercial users of the curb, reduced carbon emissions by creating or incenting CV zero emission zones, and decreased impacts to vulnerable road users through optimized curb allocation.

Objectives

The expected benefits of Stage 1 will be threefold:

1. Rigorously assess the piloted technology system to understand its scaling potential: The project will develop a technology assessment methodology that will look critically at accuracy and data use model development. This assessment will be transparent and developed in collaboration with OMF cohort cities to ensure solutions are scalable while meeting the core needs of Seattle’s digital CVP.
2. Create a CDS framework for standardizing data collection efforts of commercial curb space: SDOT will share lessons learned from Stage 1 prototyping and policy recommendations with OMF cohort cities to collectively strengthen all CDS-related SMART grant projects and better position proven technologies to be implemented at scale.
3. Create new data-driven commercial vehicle policy and permit recommendations to be enacted during Stage 2 of this grant

The recommendations will be informed by data models created by the UFL using utilization data from the project overlayed with characteristics of adjacent urban form and land use. These models will help SDOT identify areas for adjustments to existing curb allocation as well as establish a deeper understanding of the variety of commercial vehicle user behavior at the curb to meet climate goals. We anticipate these policies will benefit both curb users and local community members by reducing congestion and creating safer streets.

Presentation

Growth of Ecommerce and Ride-Hailing Services is Reshaping Cities: The Urban Freight Lab’s Innovative Solutions

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URL: https://catc.ca.gov/-/media/ctc-media/documents/tab-10-3-a11y.pdf

Publication: California Transportation Commission (August 15, 2018)

Publication Date: 2018

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.

The Urban Freight Lab at the University of Washington (UW), in partnership with the City of Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), is using a systems engineering approach to solve delivery problems that overlap cities’ and businesses’ spheres of control.

The Urban Freight Lab is a living laboratory where potential solutions are generated, evaluated, and pilot-tested inside urban towers and on city streets.

Authors: Dr. Anne Goodchild

Recommended Citation:
Goodchild, Anne. Growth of Ecommerce and Ride-Hailing Services is Reshaping Cities: The Urban Freight Lab’s Innovative Solutions. California Transportation Commission (August 15, 2018)

Paper

Providing Curb Availability Information to Delivery Drivers Reduces Cruising for Parking

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URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23987-z

Publication: Scientific Reports

Volume: (2022) 12:19355

Publication Date: 2022

Summary:

Delivery vehicle drivers are experiencing increasing challenges in finding available curb space to park in urban areas, which increases instances of cruising for parking and parking in unauthorized spaces. Policies traditionally used to reduce cruising for parking for passenger vehicles, such as parking fees and congestion pricing, are not effective at changing delivery drivers’ travel and parking behaviors.

Intelligent parking systems that use real-time curb availability information to better route and park vehicles can reduce cruising for parking, but they have never been tested for delivery vehicle drivers.

This study tested whether providing real-time curb availability information to delivery drivers reduces the travel time and distance spent cruising for parking. A curb parking information system deployed in a study area in Seattle, Wash., displayed real-time curb availabilities on a mobile app called OpenPark. A controlled experiment assigned drivers’ deliveries in the study area with and without access to OpenPark.

The data collected showed that when curb availability information was provided to drivers, their cruising for parking time significantly decreased by 27.9 percent, and their cruising distance decreased by 12.4 percent. These results demonstrate the potential for implementing intelligent parking systems to improve the efficiency of urban logistics systems.

Authors: Dr. Giacomo Dalla ChiaraFiete KruteinDr. Andisheh RanjbariDr. Anne Goodchild

Recommended Citation:
Dalla Chiara, G., Krutein, K.F., Ranjbari, A. et al. Providing curb availability information to delivery drivers reduces cruising for parking. Sci Rep 12, 19355 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23987-z

Article

Giving Curb Visibility to Delivery Drivers

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URL: https://issuu.com/apatransport/docs/2022_sotp/s/16021615

Publication: American Planning Association | 2022 State of Transportation Planning

Pages: 134-143

Publication Date: 2022

Summary:

At the time we are writing this article, hundreds of thousands of delivery vehicles are getting ready to hit the road and travel across U.S. cities to meet the highest peak of demand for ecommerce deliveries during Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and the Christmas holiday season. This mammoth fleet will not only add vehicle miles traveled through urban centers but also increase parking congestion, battling with other vehicles for available curb space.

While the integration of road traffic data with modern navigation systems has seen huge developments in the past decade, drastically changing the way we, and delivery vehicles, navigate through cities, not as much can be said when it comes to parking. The task of finding and securing parking is still left to drivers, and largely unsupported by real-time information or app-based solutions.

Delivery vehicle drivers are affected by curb parking congestion even more than any other driver because delivery drivers have to re-park their vehicles not once or twice, but 10, 20, or even more times during a delivery route.

Our work, discussed in this article, focuses on improving delivery drivers’ lives when it comes to finding available curb space, improving the delivery system, and reducing some of the externalities generated in the process. We first describe what types of parking behaviors delivery drivers adopt when facing a lack of available curb parking, then we will quantify the cost of lack of available parking, estimating how much time delivery drivers spend circling the block and searching for parking. We then discuss how we can improve on that by creating the first curb availability information system – OpenPark.

Authors: Dr. Giacomo Dalla ChiaraDr. Anne Goodchild

Recommended Citation:
Dalla Chiara, Giacomo and Anne Goodchild. Giving Curb Visibility to Delivery Drivers. Intersections + Identities: State of Transportation Planning 2022, 134-143.

Paper

Modeling the Competing Demands of Carriers, Building Managers, and Urban Planners to Identify Balanced Solutions for Allocating Building and Parking Resources

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URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2022.100656

Publication: Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Volume: 15

Publication Date: 2022

Summary:

While the number of deliveries has been increasing rapidly, infrastructure such as parking and building configurations has changed less quickly, given limited space and funds. This may lead to an imbalance between supply and demand, preventing the current resources from meeting the future needs of urban freight activities.

This study aimed to discover the future delivery rates that would overflow the current delivery systems and find the optimal number of resources. To achieve this objective, we introduced a multi-objective, simulation-based optimization model to define the complex freight delivery cost relationships among delivery workers, building managers, and city planners, based on the real-world observations of the final 50 feet of urban freight activities at an office building in downtown Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.

Our discrete-event simulation model with increasing delivery arrival rates showed an inverse relationship in costs between delivery workers and building managers, while the cost of city planners decreased up to ten deliveries/h and then increased until 18 deliveries/h, at which point costs increased for all three parties and overflew the current building and parking resources. The optimal numbers of resources that would minimize the costs for all three parties were then explored by a non-dominated sorting genetic algorithm (NSGA-2) and a multi-objective, evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D).

Our study sheds new light on a data-driven approach for determining the best combination of resources that would help the three entities work as a team to better prepare for the future demand for urban goods deliveries.

Authors: Haena KimDr. Anne Goodchild, Linda Boyle

Recommended Citation:
Kim, H., Goodchild, A., & Boyle, L. N. (2022). Modeling The Competing Demands Of Carriers, Building Managers, And Urban Planners To Identify Balanced Solutions For Allocating Building And Parking Resources. In Transportation Research Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Vol. 15, p. 100656). Elsevier BV. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trip.2022.100656

Presentation

Investigation of Private Loading Bay Operations in Seattle’s Central Business District

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URL: https://metrans.org/inuf_2022-papers_presentations

Publication: 9th International Urban Freight Conference, Long Beach, May 2022

Publication Date: 2022

Summary:

Cities need new load/unload space concepts to efficiently move freight, particularly as autonomous vehicles (both passenger and freight) become feasible. This research aims to: understand the importance of off-street commercial parking, understand how off-street facilities are managed, and determine whether off-street commercial parking is an underutilized resource for urban goods delivery.

Researchers determined the locations of commercial and residential buildings in Seattle’s Central Business District with off-street delivery infrastructure, established communication with property management or building operators, and conducted interviews regarding facility management, usage, roadblocks in design/operations, and utilization.

This research finds that overbooking of off-street space is infrequent, most facility management is done by simple tenant booking systems, buildings relying primarily on curb space notes that infrastructure and operations were hindered by municipal services — especially when connecting to alleyways.

Authors: Griffin DonnellyDr. Anne Goodchild

Recommended Citation:
Griffin Donnelly and Anne Goodchild. Investigation of Private Loading Bay Operations in Seattle's Central Business District. 9th International Urban Freight Conference (INUF), Long Beach, CA May 2022.

Presentation

Can Real-Time Curb Availability Information Improve Urban Delivery Efficiency?

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URL: https://metrans.org/inuf_2022-papers_presentations

Publication: 9th International Urban Freight Conference, Long Beach, May 2022

Publication Date: 2022

Summary:

Parking cruising is a well-known phenomenon in passenger transportation, and a significant source of congestion and pollution in urban areas. While urban commercial vehicles are known to travel longer distances and to stop more frequently than passenger vehicles, little is known about their parking cruising behavior, nor how parking infrastructure affects such behavior.

In this study, we propose a simple method to quantitatively explore the parking cruising behavior of commercial vehicle drivers in urban areas using widely available GPS data, and how urban transport infrastructure impacts parking cruising times.

We apply the method to a sample of 2900 trips performed by a fleet of commercial vehicles, delivering and picking up parcels in downtown Seattle. We obtain an average estimated parking cruising time of 2.3 minutes per trip, contributing on average for 28 percent of total trip time. We also found that cruising for parking decreased as more curb-space was allocated to commercial vehicles load zones and paid parking and as more off-street parking areas were available at trip destinations, whereas it increased as more curb space was allocated to bus zone.

Authors: Dr. Giacomo Dalla ChiaraFiete KruteinDr. Anne Goodchild

Recommended Citation:
Giacomo Dalla Chiara, Klaas Fiete Krutein, and Anne Goodchild (2022). Can Real-Time Curb Availability Information Improve Urban Delivery Efficiency? 9th International Urban Freight Conference (INUF), Long Beach, CA May 2022.