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Paper

Delivery Process for an Office Building in the Seattle Central Business District

 
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Publication: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Volume: Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting
Publication Date: 2018
Summary:

Movement of goods within a central business district (CBD) can be very constraining with high levels of congestion and insufficient curb spaces. Pick-up and delivery activities encompass a significant portion of urban goods movement and inefficient operations can negatively impact the already highly congested areas and truck dwell times. Identifying and quantifying the delivery processes within the building is often difficult.

This paper introduces a systematic approach to examine freight movement, using a process flow map with quantitative delivery times measured during the final segment of the delivery process. This paper focuses on vertical movements such as unloading/loading activities, taking freight elevators, and performing pick-up/delivery operations. This approach allows us to visualize the components of the delivery process and identify the processes that consume the most time and greatest variability. Using this method, the authors observed the delivery process flows of an office building in downtown Seattle, grouped into three major steps: 1. Entering, 2. Delivering, 3. Exiting. This visualization tool provides researchers and planners with a better understanding of the current practices in the urban freight system and helps identify the non-value-added activities and time that can unnecessarily increase the overall delivery time.

Authors: Haena KimDr. Anne Goodchild, Linda Ng Boyle
Recommended Citation:
Kim, Haena, Linda Ng Boyle, and Anne Goodchild. "Delivery Process for an Office Building in the Seattle Central Business District." Transportation Research Record 2672, no. 9 (2018): 173-183. 
Report

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

 
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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.

Two key goals have been identified early for the Final 50 Feet program:

  • Reducing truck time in a load/unload space in the city (“dwell time”)
  • Minimizing failed first package deliveries. About 8-10% of first delivery attempts in urban areas are unsuccessful, creating more return trips
Recommended Citation:
Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center. (2018) The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System: Executive Summary.

UPS E-Bike Delivery Pilot Test in Seattle: Analysis of Public Benefits and Costs (Task Order 6)

The City of Seattle granted a permit to United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) in fall 2018 to pilot test a new e-bike parcel delivery system in the Pioneer Square/Belltown area for one year. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) commissioned the Urban Freight Lab (UFL) to quantify and document the public impacts of this multimodal delivery system change in the final 50 feet of supply chains, to provide data and evidence for development of future urban freight policies.

The UFL will conduct analyses into the following research questions:

  1. What are the total changes in VMT and emissions (PM and GHG) to all three affected cargo van routes due to the e-bike pilot test in the Pike Place Market and neighboring areas?
  2. What is the change in the delivery van’s dwell time, e.g. the amount of time the van is parked, before and after introducing the e-bike?
  3. How does the e-bike system affect UPS’ failed first delivery (FFD) attempt rate along the route?
  4. If UPS begins to stage drop boxes along the route for the e-bike (instead of having to replenish from the parked trailer) what are the impacts to total VMT and emissions?
  5. How do e-bike delivery operations impact pedestrian, other bike, and motor traffic?
Paper

An Empirical Analysis of Passenger Vehicle Dwell Time and Curb Management Strategies for Ride-Hailing Pick-Up/Drop-Off Operations

Publication: Transportation
Publication Date: 2023
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. The dwell time of passenger vehicles picking up/dropping off (PUDO) passengers, including ride-hailing vehicles, taxis, and other cars, is a vital metric for curb management, but little is understood about the key factors that affect it. This research used a hazard-based duration modeling approach to describe the PUDO dwell times of over 6,000 passenger vehicles conducted in Seattle, Wash. Additionally, a before-after study approach was used to assess the effects of two curb management strategies: adding PUDO zones and geofencing. Results showed that the number of passenger maneuvers, location and time of day, and traffic and operation management factors significantly affected PUDO dwell times. PUDO operations took longer with more passengers, pick-ups (as opposed to drop-offs), vehicle´s trunk access, curbside stops, and in the afternoon. More vehicles at the curb and in adjacent travel lanes were found to be related to shorter PUDO dwell times but with a less practical significance. Ride-hailing vehicles tended to spend less time conducting PUDOs than other passenger vehicles and taxis. Adding PUDO zones, together with geofencing, was found to be related to faster PUDO operations at the curb. Suggestions are made for the future design of curb management strategies to accommodate ride-hailing operations.

Authors: José Luis Machado LeónDr. Anne Goodchild, Don MacKenzie (University of Washington College of Engineering)
Recommended Citation:
Machado-León, J.L., MacKenzie, D. & Goodchild, A. An Empirical Analysis of Passenger Vehicle Dwell Time and Curb Management Strategies for Ride-Hailing Pick-Up/Drop-Off Operations. Transportation (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-023-10380-6
Paper

Do Parcel Lockers Reduce Delivery Times? Evidence from the Field

 
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Publication: Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review
Volume: 172 (2023)
Publication Date: 2023
Summary:

Common carrier parcel lockers have emerged as a secure, automated, self-service means of delivery consolidation in congested urban areas, which are believed to mitigate last-mile delivery challenges by reducing out-of-vehicle delivery times and consequently vehicle dwell times at the curb. However, little research exists to empirically demonstrate the environmental and efficiency gains from this technology. In this study, we designed a nonequivalent group pre-test/post-test control experiment to estimate the causal effects of a parcel locker on delivery times in a residential building in downtown Seattle. The causal effects are measured in terms of vehicle dwell time and the time delivery couriers spend inside the building, through the difference-in-difference method and using a similar nearby residential building as a control. The results showed a statistically significant decrease in time spent inside the building and a small yet insignificant reduction in delivery vehicle dwell time at the curb. The locker was also well received by the building managers and residents.

Recommended Citation:
Ranjbari, A., Diehl, C., Dalla Chiara, G., & Goodchild, A. (2023). Do Commercial Vehicles Cruise for Parking? Empirical Evidence from Seattle. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 172, 103070. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tre.2023.103070 
Paper

Toward Predicting Stay Time for Private Car Users: A RNN-NALU Approach

 
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Publication: IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology
Volume: 71 (6)
Pages: 6007 - 6018
Publication Date: 2022
Summary:

Predicting the stay time of private cars has various applications in location-based services and traffic management. Due to the associated randomness and uncertainty, achieving the promising performance of stay time prediction is a challenge. We propose an RNN-based encoder model to solve this problem, which consists of three components, i.e., an encoder module, an exception module, and an MLP dropout. First, we encode the stay behaviour into hidden vectors at a specific time to avoid the effect of time sparsity. The encoder module utilizes a multilayer perceptron (MLP) to learn spatiotemporal features from the historical trajectory data, such as the inherent relationship between the stop points and corresponding stay time. We proved a linear relationship problem that cannot be ignored in the stay time prediction problem. In particular, we have added basic arithmetic logic units to the network framework to find linear relationships. By reconstructing the basic arithmetic and logical relations of the network, we have improved the ability of the neural network to handle linear relations and the extrapolation ability of the neural network. Our method can remember the number patterns seen in the training set very well and infer this representation reasonably. Moreover, we utilize the dropout technique to prevent the prediction model from overfitting. We perform extensive experiments based on a large-scale real-world private car trajectory dataset. The experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves an RMSE of 0.1429 and a MAPE of 55.8533%. Furthermore, the results verify the effectiveness and advantages of the proposed model when compared with the benchmarks.

Authors: Amelia Regan, Qibo Zhang; Fanzi Zeng; Zhu Xiao; Hongbo Jiang; Kehua Yang; Yongdong Zhu
Recommended Citation:
Q. Zhang et al., "Toward Predicting Stay Time for Private Car Users: A RNN-NALU Approach," in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 71, no. 6, pp. 6007-6018, June 2022, doi: 10.1109/TVT.2022.3164978.