TRBAM: State of Sustainable Urban Freight Planning in the United States (Poster Session 4046)

Poster Session 4046: Emerging Trends in Urban Freight Transportation

This session includes poster presentations about the latest developments in urban freight. It covers both innovations in methods to better understand and model urban freight flows, as well as the assessment of solutions to enhance the efficiency and sustainability of urban freight transportation. The presentations will cover different topics, such as, the use of autonomous robots for urban deliveries, the use of urban consolidation centers and lockers for the last mile.

Poster: The State of Sustainable Urban Freight Planning in the United States (TRBAM-24-04343)

The transportation sector is the largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. To combat rising emissions, cities throughout the country have produced climate action and sustainability plans that outline strategies to reduce their carbon footprint from transportation. Last-mile delivery transportation is becoming an increasingly important component of urban transport emissions due to the rise of e-commerce, yet few cities are actively pursuing policies to reduce emissions from this subsector. This paper provides an analysis of the planning efforts in 58 major (most populous, fastest growing) U.S. cities to reduce carbon emissions from last-mile freight. The analysis describes the overall state of sustainable last-mile freight planning in major U.S. cities by identifying the strategies that are being adopted and evaluating the state of advancement in setting and deploying them. Some cities, have proposed up to ten emission-reduction strategies for freight, yet nearly half of the reviewed cities lack any policies related to last-mile freight, let alone sustainable last-mile freight.