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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.
As a cheap-skate, before the age of reliable internet shopping, sometimes I'd go to a shop 5 times before any significant purchase.
Now, most of that browsing is done online. plenty of folks still go for the 'mall experience', but I'd say that for every truck winding down the alleys, you're avoiding a much larger number of folks routing to a set of shops, then back.
In terms of road damage, the single truck likely does slightly more wear over time (more weight at once, worse than many smaller weights), but in terms of congestion, the truck is going to be spending much less overall time on the main roads every day, than the shoppers would.
But really, are we actually going back to "is the internet bad for our shared resources" discussions?
Far too late to put that genie back in the bottle - it's granting too many important wishes to go back now.
Ryan Fenton
The delivery truck makes many stops per route. An individual shopper makes just one stop and needs a parking space.
It's far more efficient to have a single loaded truck provided multiple deliveries at once to an entire apartment/building complex. But for the suburbs, drone delivery might be more efficient if a single truck made the finally drop-off with drones. Sort of like a mobile drone carrier where you might have two or more simultaneous drone launches, drop off, then fly back to the truck where a recharge occurs automatically while docked inside.
Life is not for the lazy.
When retail stores were in downtown areas, there was tremendous congestion when people went to shop.
When they moved around to different malls, there was still a lot of congestion around the strip centers and malls (as recently as the 90s, I remember waiting thru 15-20 minutes of traffic to get into the parking lot.
Now, I bought and paid for 5 products on amazon- I didn't drive- I didn't consume gas- I didn't contribute to congestion on the roads- I didn't get into a car accident, and my car wasn't damaged in the parking lot.
Say 20 consumers shopping personally consume 400 minutes of road time-- 20 shoppers delivery shopping consume 40 minutes of road time.
The problem is the parking infrastructure will need to adapt.
There was a time when we had a mail box at every house. Now, a lot of places have 1 mail box.
Perhaps we'll end up with a big centralized delivery hub for each block. Perhaps a designated parking area for delivery vehicles.
Amazon is looking into drones.
In any case, it's not a problem in my neighborhood yet. They pull up, drop off stuff. The road is constricted but not blockded at any time. Then they leave within 2-3 minutes. This may be more of a problem for high rise condos or apartment buildings than residential neighborhoods.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That sounds great in theory, but so does Marxism. Centralization very very rarely beats a competitive market for efficiency.
Marxism has sounded terrible in theory ever since Game Theory and Information Theory became serious subjects (what, about 50+ years now?)
Same for central planning of anything - it's an information theoretical problem - the central planners always lack sufficient information and sufficient information processing capacity to make good decisions. The information and capacity are distributed in markets.
It's kinda like getting rid of packet-switched networks and having one computer do all of the Internet traffic flow. That would be an unmitigated disaster. Let's name it after Chavez, tho.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
This sounds like all the people that bitch about windows that never use it and how slow Intel m3 cpus are again because they never use them and don't have a clue...
I'd rather get anything by USPS and UPS or FEDEX.. comes at a predictable time and generally twice as fast for their basic service and cheaper to boot... (First Class vs Ground)..
Everyone just loves to bash the post office for some reason without any real reason behind it...
Amazon is already fighting this with their locker program.. probably wont be too long before it's cheaper to get it sent to a locker vs directly to the end destination....
But the postal service is a Packet-Switched-Network isn't it?
Private roads are a great way to make over half the country uninhabitable and unreachable as the tolls necessary to make roads profitable in rural areas would be too high to be practical, thus the roads would never get built which then means these areas will never attain the populations to support roads profitably.
Your link is garbage too. Siting a book summary that doesnt lay out any of the author's evidence does not support your claim at all. But hey, maybe the author has it right and every affluent country in the world has it wrong!
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
The free market competition amongst all of the different roads connecting directly to your driveway will ensure that you can always afford to leave your house.
"Park wherever you want, boys - it's already paid for!"
I work in Seattle. I rarely drive, though - I take transit (mostly the Sounder and Link light rail nowadays; but I rode busses a lot before). Generally speaking, I have little sympathy for people who insist on driving into the city all the time.
Having said that - I think the cities' arguments here are disingenuous. Over the past 15-20 years, Seattle has intentionally gone on a "parking diet" for various reasons (creating bike lane space; explicitly trying to force people onto transit; etc.). There is now far less roadside parking than there was 20-30 years ago, despite the growth the city has seen... and I doubt Seattle is the only city that has made these choices.
So if Seattle has a problem with UPS and FedEx drivers double-parking and blocking traffic, it's likely a problem they've created themselves.
#DeleteChrome
I know it suits some, but man...I'd not like to live that crowded.
I like not having a problem getting things delivered to me.
To each his own I guess.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And if they have it in stock, FREE instantaneous shipping. Even if Bezos invents a transporter, he still can't beat that.
Its only free if you live in the walmart, otherwise, it costs you gas and wear and tear on your vehicle. For the typical American, a trip to Walmart costs them $9 and they are too stupid to realize it (Average of at least 46.2 cents per mile times an average of 10 miles). In most cases, ground shipping is cheaper from almost anywhere in the US to almost anywhere in the US.
It also requires that you spend an hour (give or take) round trip to Walmart and back, plus the aggravation of dealing with walmarts long lines and absolutely shitty customer service). So at minimum wage, you can add another $10 to that cost. On top of that, even if amazon isn't cheaper than walmart for any given item, there is someone out there that is.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
The Japanese are pretty law abiding.
Japan is also extremely non-diverse.
There's a very important lesson to be learned in those two facts.
We could even, if there were sufficient volume, consolidate and deliver the packages at a cheap price... we could call these locations "Post Offices."
OTOH delivery services generally require you to have someone wait in the house for hours.
Hahahaha, No.
Delivery drivers will release delivery packages in almost any neighborhood as long as there is some way to "hide" the package so it doesn't get snatched. Be it a back door, a porch, or anywhere else they can deliver it. Even in bad neighborhoods a surprisingly small percentage of such deliveries are reported lost or stolen. On any given day less than 2% of residential deliveries are delayed until the following day because no one was home, and the overwhelming majority (95%+) of residential deliveries are driver release (No signature) because the drivers are expected to leave packages unless the signature is required by the shipper (which costs extra). The reason for all this is simple economics. Paying a driver to stand around for 2 minutes collecting a signature is expensive. It is vastly cheaper for the shippers to take the cheaper shipper release option and simply pay out of pocket for any lost or stolen packages than it is to pay for signature verification on every package. The difference in cost is so dramatic that any given shipper would have to be replacing almost 20% of their packages before the cost of signatures would be cheaper than simply replacing merchandise.
If you have been having trouble with getting your packages delivered to your door, I would suggest the following steps: 1) unlock your screen door so that the driver can place packages between your screen door and inside door. This is the easiest "hiding" spot they can use. 2) put a small note just inside the screen door indicating where larger packages can safely be left. 3) Call the carrier and ask to have a note put on your delivery address indicating a safe place to put delivery packages. 4) find a friendly neighbor who is home during the day and leave a note for packages to be delivered there in the event of an issue. There are many more such suggestions but they all boil down to creating an obvious place for the delivery driver to put something for you to find, but is not in plain view from the street.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
While Japan may seem less diverse... its more like just a slower melting pot with a few highly recognizable dominate genes.
Everyone gets thrown together in the USA, while the melting occurs more around the edges of Japan... but that doesn't mean it is low diverity... just that we don't recognize it because all we see is "Japanse Person". Even a Japanse-American is going to get labeled a "Japanse Person" even though their heritage is highly diverse. A friend of mine in Brazil is 1/2 or quarter Japanese... but most people would recognize her as Japanese off the cuff even though she is Brazilian.
C) How the market for commodity retail goods works. Normal margins are about 3%, similar to Walmart. Do you really think they're going to destroy Walmart any time soon?
Amazon's e-commerce business is a very profitable sideline for them, but they make their money from AWS. They sell much more "stuff" overall, but 90% of Amazon's profits are from AWS.
Anyway, for retails goods which are available for any company to sell, the profit margins are always slightly over the actual sales cost. This is because there is plenty of competition which will undercut on price very quickly if you raise your prices. Amazon has distribution, sales costs and volume advantages over most other companies, so they're able to price lower for most stuff. That doesn't mean they can ever raise their prices to anything higher than their next closest competitor's costs without being undercut in turn. They know that, so they keep their prices lower than the competition in order to keep their customer base.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Same for central planning of anything - it's an information theoretical problem - the central planners always lack sufficient information and sufficient information processing capacity to make good decisions.
You mean like say the military? Given the choice to defend my home, I'll chose a centralised military over and disorganised rabble carrying pitchforks.
I think you need to revise your hypothesis.
Hmm...so, is this park you have, like right across the street from you? How far do you have to haul everything over? What do you do for a grill, haul one of those over too? I have a nice Big Green Egg ceramic grill, and it really isn't terribly portable, but it IS fantastic, I can even cook low and slow on it, fill it with lump charcoal and some wood and it can cook 220F or so overnight. If you're wanting to BBQ and not just "grill"...where do you keep your smoker and firewood stack(s)? You leave that at the park, or do you haul all those over too? Gas grill?
How many friends do you have at your parties...?
And..if you do have it at the park, how far in advance do you have to make reservations? Do you have to pay for that? Can you decide on a whim you want to grill out, or this time of year where I live...have a crawfish boil, and have your spot in the park there for you by the afternoon on a morning you decide to have a wingding?
Sure it can be done, but doesn't sound convenient and you are likely dependent on what every cooking devices the city installs and maintains, and from the parks I"ve seen in my life, those aren't really choice utilities, not easy to get good, consistent results on...
Sharing walls. You must live in some very solid apartments. When I've lived in apts...the walls were usually thin enough to hear people sneeze loudly, much less act as any meaningful barrier to my stereo system. I paid good money for great sound and I don't want to waste it. My sub alone during movie nights shakes the ground....not good for wall attached neighbors.
But again, it is whatever suits you, but I fear your definition of "bbq", and parties differs greatly than mine and what most of my friends and neighbors are here where I live.
I won't even get into where you park your boat...?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Both of your posts, cayenne8, show that you haven't given serious thought to living in a big city. You've made up your mind and have your preconceived notions and, even when someone from the city lays out accounts that contradict your beliefs, you still think there's gotta be something wrong with it.
One thing thegarbz didn't mention, is that many apartments DO have back yards, and they are more than ample for BBQ's with lots of people. For example, virtual every brownstone-ish building in brooklyn has 2-5 stories and a backyard. My backyard is as wide as the building, and over 75ft deep. I have exclusive use of it, but I know others that have a shared backyard for their building, and others that have either exclusive or shared roof access (some of which are quite nice). I also have several parks within walking distance. FWIW, I pay less than average for the area - backyards generally add little to the value/cost of the apartment around here because it also means you are on or below street level.
Most of the apartments are older, and yes, the walls are very solid, thank you. I'm sure your neighbors just love hearing your overpriced stereo blare through your shitty new home construction walls.
Of the large city parks, AFAIK there is no reservation needed. There are loads of permanent grills, or you can bring your own portable one.
I won't even get into where you park your boat...?
Ok, who the fuck are you? I've known plenty of people that lived within walking distance of a lake and didn't own a boat. Boat ownership is expensive. But fuck it... let's dive into this myth too. If you're living in a big city, you're probably near a waterway already. Park it in the water. If you can't afford the slip fees, look to one of the many storage facilities, or move just outside the downtown area and get a place with a private driveway - for example, anywhere on staten island, which is still within NYC.
Look, you sound like you've got plenty of means to be able to live very comfortably in a city. If you have to ask, "where you park your boat", then you'll do fine once you get off your ass and learn to answer basic questions like that yourself. For everyone else, the parks are wonderful and maintained for you, the walls are (generally) properly designed, people get along great overall, and feel free to pick a pet desire and get it (ex. if you want a backyard, you can get one; if you just want to bbq, there are lots of options).
If you want to stay out of the big cities, go for it. Just stop trying to shit on other peoples choices, especially when you don't know what you're talking about.