{"id":14749,"date":"2018-12-26T22:51:10","date_gmt":"2018-12-26T22:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=14749"},"modified":"2018-12-26T22:51:10","modified_gmt":"2018-12-26T22:51:10","slug":"wheres-my-package-common-carrier-freight-lockers-can-ease-city-traffic-and-prevent-failed-deliveries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wheres-my-package-common-carrier-freight-lockers-can-ease-city-traffic-and-prevent-failed-deliveries\/","title":{"rendered":"Where’s my package? Common carrier freight lockers can ease city traffic and prevent failed deliveries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barbara Ivanov<\/a>, University of Washington<\/a><\/em> and Anne Goodchild<\/a>, University of Washington<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Online shopping is a big convenience for many Americans, but porch piracy can ruin the experience. For example, Mikaela Gilbert lived in a row house in West Philadelphia while she studied systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. By her junior year, Gilbert had lost enough packages to thieves that she devised an elaborate three-pronged security strategy. <\/p>\n

Her first line of defense was having online purchases shipped to a friend who lived in a high-rise apartment where a doorman secured incoming packages. She also sent orders to her parents\u2019 house in New Jersey when she had a visit home planned. But both of those options were hugely inconvenient, so sometimes she routed deliveries to her place after texting her seven housemates to be on the lookout.<\/p>\n

When Amazon installed branded delivery lockers<\/a> near the center of campus, Gilbert began receiving packages there, which was less stressful than managing a small army of collaborators. But it limited her shopping to just one retailer. When Amazon didn\u2019t have something she wanted, she had to fall back on her circle of friends.<\/p>\n

Retailers delivering to a customers\u2019 homes also want to avoid these situations. Research at our lab has identified a promising alternative: publicly accessible common carrier freight lockers where all retailers can leave packages for pickup. <\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Common carrier locker pilot test at the Seattle Municipal Tower. Shown: Chris Eaves and Jude Willcher, Seattle Department of Transportation, and Barbara Ivanov, Urban Freight Lab.<\/span>
\n Barbara Ivanov<\/span>, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So many stops, so little time<\/h2>\n

Like Amazon\u2019s branded lockers, common carrier lockers are automated, self-service storage units that provide a secure location for customers to receive online purchases. However, any retailer or delivery firm can access them. Some private buildings have such lockers now, but those are only open to residents. Our study<\/a> examined the effectiveness of locating them in public spaces in dense urban areas, where they can be available to everyone. <\/p>\n

The University of Washington\u2019s Urban Freight Lab<\/a> is a structured research work group composed of leading retail, logistics and delivery firms. We partner with the Seattle Department of Transportation, collect and analyze data, and run pilot tests of promising solutions in Seattle\u2019s Center City area. Our focus is on solving urban delivery issues in an age when e-commerce is exploding, city populations are expanding, and gridlock is reaching epic levels.<\/p>\n

In its first report<\/a>, published in early 2018, the lab analyzed the \u201cFinal 50 Feet\u201d of the urban goods delivery system \u2013 the last leg of the supply chain. It begins when trucks pull into a parking space and stop moving, whether at the curb, in an alley, or at a building\u2019s loading dock or internal freight bay. From there, it follows delivery people inside urban towers, ending where customers receive their packages. <\/p>\n

Researchers discovered two especially thorny challenges in this segment of the chain: extended \u201cdwell time,\u201d when trucks are parked in load\/unload spaces too long, and failed first delivery attempts due to causes that include porch piracy. Solving these puzzles could reduce delivery costs, traffic congestion and crime rates, and improve online shoppers\u2019 experiences.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Delivering packages one at a time to individual homes or offices is time-consuming and requires driving to multiple locations and parking in multiple spaces. It also results in failed first delivery rates of up to 15 percent in parts of some cities, according to some of our lab\u2019s member companies. Instead, we decided to try creating delivery density in a single location right where the trucks unloaded.<\/p>\n

Centralized lockers where people live and work<\/h2>\n

Accordingly, the Urban Freight Lab\u2019s second research project pilot-tested placing a common carrier locker system in the 62-floor Seattle Municipal Tower<\/a> in downtown Seattle\u2019s financial district. This step cut the time required to make deliveries in the tower by 78 percent<\/a>. The next question was where to locate more of these delivery density points, or \u201cmini-distribution nodes,\u201d as the study called them.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Urban Freight Lab student data collectors document delivery times in Seattle Municipal Tower pilot project.<\/span>
\n Barbara Ivanov<\/span>, CC BY-ND<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Amazon, which is headquartered in Seattle, had already approached regional transportation agency Sound Transit<\/a> about locating its branded lockers at the agency\u2019s Link light rail stations. But public stewards of the property \u2013 the Seattle Department of Transportation, Sound Transit and King County Metro \u2013 did not want to advantage one carrier or retailer over others. Instead, we suggested locating common carrier lockers. <\/p>\n

The transit agencies saw that this could reduce delivery truck traffic in neighborhoods they served, easing congestion and reducing vehicle emissions. And their mobility hub policies aimed to create lively public spaces that offered not only multiple transportation modes but lots of convenient amenities.<\/p>\n

In a survey of 185 riders at three transit stations, our lab\u2019s third research study found strong interest in the lockers<\/a>, with up to 67 percent of respondents at each station willing to use them and the vast majority willing to carry a package three to six blocks to do so. These responses, plus the fact that some 137,000 people lived within a 30-minute walk of the three stations, suggested that tens of thousands of Seattle residents would be willing to use common carrier lockers at those stations.<\/p>\n

\n \"\"<\/a>
\n Urban transit centers (shown: Fulton Transit Center in New York City) could become package pickup sites for people who live or work nearby.<\/span>
\n MusikAnimal\/Wikimedia<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For retailers like Nordstrom, the lockers represent a potential solution to porch piracy and other glitches associated with online shopping. \u201cRather than leaving the package at a door, some carriers want customers to come to their location to collect the package, while others might redeliver,\u201d Loren VandenBerghe, director of transportation for Nordstrom, told us. \u201cWhatever the process, the customer has to track down the package. Instead, we\u2019d prefer to get the package in our customer\u2019s hands when they expect it.\u201d <\/p>\n

Researchers have developed criteria for selecting locker locations and chosen five possible sites at or near the transit stations for pilot testing. We have received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to expand use of common carriers lockers in public spaces to a larger area in Seattle\u2019s dense urban core and start actively managing the load\/unload space network with new technology. Delivery drivers will be able to pull right up to lockers and unload goods, and riders can pick up their packages when they hop on or off a bus \u2013 making it much more convenient than waiting for a truck and scanning the street for porch pirates.\"The<\/p>\n

Barbara Ivanov<\/a>, Director, Urban Freight Lab, University of Washington<\/a><\/em> and Anne Goodchild<\/a>, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director, Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center, University of Washington<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barbara Ivanov, University of Washington and Anne Goodchild, University of Washington Online shopping is a big convenience for many Americans, but porch piracy can ruin the experience. For example, Mikaela Gilbert lived in a row house in West Philadelphia while she studied systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. By her junior year, Gilbert had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":14746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1862],"tags":[1542,5618,5662,4337,4205,161,4744,5661,643],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14749"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14749"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14750,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14749\/revisions\/14750"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}