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E-Commerce Is Clogging City Streets With Delivery Trucks (citylab.com)
The Atlantic's CityLab describes "a massive surge in deliveries to residential dwellings...creating a traffic nightmare." An anonymous reader quotes their report:
While truck traffic currently represents about 7% of urban traffic in American cities, it bears a disproportionate congestion cost of $28 billion, or about 17% of the total U.S. congestion costs, in wasted hours and gas. Cities, struggling to keep up with the deluge of delivery drivers, are seeing their curb space and streets overtaken by double-parked vehicles, to say nothing of the bonus pollution and roadwear produced thanks to a surfeit of Amazon Prime orders... Often, the box trucks will double-park in a two-lane street if there's no loading zone to pull into, snarling traffic behind them... "The streets were not designed for that kind of activity," says Alison Conway, an assistant professor of civil engineering at the City College of New York.
Scott Kubly, director of the Seattle Department of Transportation, says "With the volume of deliveries, ticketing isn't effective for us in terms of managing the street. UPS and FedEx will just negotiate a lump sum payment for all the tickets they get instead of fighting every ticket"... In 2011 in Washington, D.C., UPS alone received just shy of 32,000 tickets. Instead of adjudicating each ticket, many large cities will strike agreements or introduce programs through which delivery companies can pay off all tickets in one swoop.
The article points out online retails sales have grown 15% every year this decade in the U.S. -- calling it the other side of the "retail apocalypse" that's killing brick-and-mortar stores.
Scott Kubly, director of the Seattle Department of Transportation, says "With the volume of deliveries, ticketing isn't effective for us in terms of managing the street. UPS and FedEx will just negotiate a lump sum payment for all the tickets they get instead of fighting every ticket"... In 2011 in Washington, D.C., UPS alone received just shy of 32,000 tickets. Instead of adjudicating each ticket, many large cities will strike agreements or introduce programs through which delivery companies can pay off all tickets in one swoop.
The article points out online retails sales have grown 15% every year this decade in the U.S. -- calling it the other side of the "retail apocalypse" that's killing brick-and-mortar stores.
The USPS is the most worthless delivery service in the world. When someone tries to send me a package by USPS it has maybe a 50/50 chance of getting to me. They'll deliver "signature required" items without a signature, they'll happily fold "DO NOT BEND" packages in half, they're more than happy to impale boxes with a forklift and refuse to cover the damage.
Things bought from Amazon Prime arrive on time, every time. The last order I had from Amazon Prime had a single item that was sent by the USPS, because it wasn't sold by Amazon but by a third party. It was days late. Everything else was either on time or early.
There's a reason people don't use the USPS.
The problem here is that a delivery truck will make a stop in the middle of a street not meant for that activity, but a shopper in a car will find a parking spot already designed for that. As we shift to an economy where goods are delivered directly by truck, the traffic infrastructure needs to adapt.
You know, in ancient Rome and even outlying territories, they had worked out that commercial deliveries had to be restricted to certain hours to make things manageable. You would think we would um, take advantage of proven techniques like that?
or, more appropriately, "anthill". Too many people cramped together in too little space cause traffic jams. Either live with it or move to a less populated area.
a locked metal cage full of packages
The Japanese are pretty law abiding. In Seattle, that would result in a rush of hobos with crow-bars.
Have gnu, will travel.