In Amazon’s hometown, people turn to their computers to order everything from groceries to last-minute birthday presents to the odd toothbrush or medication forgotten from the store.

If online shopping continues to grow at its current rate, there may be twice as many trucks delivering packages in Seattle’s city center within five years, a new report projects — and double the number of trucks looking for a parking space.

In the , the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and the 91̽��’s at the have analyzed solutions for alleviating urban congestion by making truck parking spaces more productive and reducing the growth of truck traffic.

“Seattle is the perfect laboratory to find better ways of managing commercial truck parking and delivering packages in urban settings,” said , SCTL director and a 91̽��professor of civil and environmental engineering. “By testing data-driven solutions on our streets and in our buildings, we hope to reduce traffic in congested areas of the city as well as missed deliveries that frustrate consumers and retailers alike.”

By mapping privately owned delivery infrastructure for the first time, a team of 91̽��researchers and students found that 87 percent of all the buildings in downtown Seattle, Uptown (also known as lower Queen Anne) and South Lake Union have to rely on the city’s curb and alley space to receive deliveries. Only 13 percent of buildings have loading bays or docks that allow trucks to park on private property.

That’s why the report focuses on what’s known as the “Final 50 Feet” problem: the last and surprisingly complicated leg of an urban delivery that begins when a driver must find a place to park a truck or vehicle — usually on a public street or alleyway — and ends when the customer takes receipt of their package.

It’s part of a broader research initiative spearheaded the by SCTL’s , which is partnering with SDOT, Nordstrom, UPS, the U.S. Postal Service and Charlie’s Produce to re-think everything from how cities apportion curb and street space to how building owners manage the growing avalanche of packages delivered to urban towers.

“Seattle is one of the fastest-growing cities in the country, and SDOT is committed to meeting the urban goods delivery challenges facing most big cities in the U.S.,” said Christopher Eaves, project manager at SDOT. “We know that issuing parking tickets to companies who are simply trying to meet the daily delivery needs of residents and businesses isn’t the right solution. So, our goal is to identify and implement scalable strategies that improve deliveries at existing buildings, as well as initiate strategic research to mine new data.”

The 91̽��research team found that reducing the number of failed delivery attempts as well as the amount of time a delivery truck is parked in a loading space could offer significant public and private benefits. 91̽��researchers and SDOT plan to test promising improvement strategies in and on the streets around the  this spring.

“These two actions alone could reduce congestion and free up curb space for cars, buses, bicycles and other people who need to use that shared public space,” said Barbara Ivanov, director of the Urban Freight Lab. “Those efficiencies have the added benefit of saving retailers and delivery services money, and getting orders into the hands of customers faster.”

Cutting down on failed first delivery attempts has the potential to greatly reduce truck trips in Seattle, cut business costs and ensure that tenants in multifamily buildings can shop online and get their orders when they expect them, the report finds.

By tracking real-world deliveries in a downtown office building — the Seattle Municipal Tower — a hotel, a residential building, a historic building and the retail mall at Westlake Center, the 91̽��researchers discovered delivery drivers encounter logistical barriers that consume a significant portion of their time. Clearing security in urban towers took 12 percent of the total time, and looking for tenants and riding freight elevators took 61 percent of the total time.

The report estimates that 73 percent of delivery time is spent in buildings and, as a result, the Urban Freight Lab will pilot test a smart locker system in the loading bay of the Seattle Municipal Tower. This could substantially reduce delivery time, failed first deliveries and the amount of time that delivery trucks occupy parking spaces that serve the building.

The smart locker system pilot will allow drivers from multiple delivery companies to securely leave packages in the vestibule of the 62-story Municipal Tower. Then, the locker system will notify enrolled tenants of deliveries by text or email and send a lock code, allowing them to pick up the packages at their convenience rather than having to stop working and intercept a delivery person in their office.

The Final 50 Feet project is the first time that SDOT, in partnership with the Urban Freight Lab, has analyzed both the street network and the city’s vertical space such as office, hotel, retail and residential towers as one unified goods delivery system.

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For more information, contact Goodchild at annegood@uw.edu and Ivanov at ivanovb@uw.edu.

Delivering packages with drones can reduce carbon dioxide emissions in certain circumstances as compared to truck deliveries, a new study from 91̽��  transportation engineers finds.

In a to be published in an upcoming issue of , researchers found that drones tend to have carbon dioxide emissions advantages over trucks when the drones don’t have to fly very far to their destinations or when a delivery route has few recipients.

Trucks — which can offer environmental benefits by carrying everything from clothes to appliances to furniture in a single trip — become a more climate-friendly alternative when a delivery route has many stops or is farther away from a central warehouse.

For small, light packages — a bottle of medicine or a kid’s bathing suit — drones compete especially well. But the carbon benefits erode as the weight of a package increases, since these unmanned aerial vehicles have to use additional energy to stay aloft with a heavy load.

“Flight is so much more energy-intensive — getting yourself airborne takes a huge amount of effort. So I initially thought there was no way drones could compete with trucks on carbon dioxide emissions,” said senior author , a 91̽��associate professor of civil and environmental engineering. “In the end, I was amazed at how energy-efficient drones are in some contexts. Trucks compete better on heavier loads, but for really light packages, drones are awesome.”

Interest in the nonmilitary use of drones has increased dramatically with successful operations outside the United States in delivering food, medicine and mail. Within the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration has recently created legal space for experimenting with drone deliveries, though it is not expected to fully authorize commercial operations for some time.

While public debate has largely focused on cost reduction, privacy implications and airspace congestion, few people have analyzed the environmental consequences that drone technology may have if fully adopted by industries, the researchers found.

The new analysis, led by former 91̽��civil and environmental engineering graduate student Jordan Toy, compares carbon dioxide emissions and vehicle miles traveled from drone and truck deliveries in 10 different, real-world scenarios in Los Angeles. The model incorporated 330 different service zones, with the number of recipients varying from 50 to 500 in each zone.

The researchers relied on that were previously used in comparing the . The analysis also assumed that drones could carry only one package at a time and would return to a depot after each delivery — requiring far more back-and-forth and vehicle miles traveled than for an equivalent truck route.

The researchers estimated how much energy generation the drone deliveries would require, based on consumption for 10 different hypothetical drones. Carbon dioxide emissions were calculated using an average fuel mix for the state of California.

Goodchild said it’s unlikely that drones will be used for all delivery applications but that there are some contexts in which they appear to make sense — such as shorter trips in less densely developed communities, or in controlled places like a military base or campus. One could also envision a hybrid system in which a truck hauls an entire load of packages to a centralized location, and then a fleet of drones fans out in opposite directions to reach individual homes or businesses.

“Given what we found, probably the most realistic scenario is for drones doing the last leg of the delivery,” said Goodchild, who also directs the 91̽��. “You’re probably not going to see these in downtown Seattle anytime soon. But maybe in a rural community with roads that are slow and hard for trucks to navigate and no air space or noise concerns.”

Another takeaway for Goodchild was realizing just how much progress engineers can make when they accept a challenge. Making a flying object so light that it can accommodate its own battery and actually perform useful work was an incredibly difficult problem to solve — yet that technology now exists, Goodchild said.

“We haven’t applied the same level of effort to engineering lightweight trucks — they’re excessively heavy and the on-road fleet doesn’t look much different than it did a few decades ago,” she said. “If we took the same amount of energy we’ve put into making drones light and efficient, applied that to trucks and got them on the street, we could do so much good for the transportation industry and the environment.”

For more information, contact Goodchild at annegood@uw.edu.

In the heart of Amazon’s online retail empire, Seattleites can get everything from toothpaste to Thai food to a last-minute birthday gift delivered within hours.

But as cities like Seattle add new residents with appetites for near-instant gratification, how can businesses operating in urban environments with aggravating traffic and competition for street space meet customer expectations for quick deliveries?

A new 91̽�� research center will collaborate with the Seattle Department of Transportation and three founding industry members — Costco, Nordstrom and UPS — to tackle that question and test new solutions in urban goods delivery.

The 91̽�� will investigate high-impact, low-cost solutions for businesses delivering goods in urban settings and cities trying to manage limited curb and parking space where delivery trucks, bicycles, pedestrians and cars all need to coexist.

As part of the 91̽��, the “living lab” will bring transportation and urban planners who manage public spaces together with retailers, urban truck freight carriers, technology companies supporting transportation logistics and multifamily and commercial developers.

In Seattle’s growing number of apartment and condo buildings, for instance, the boom in online deliveries is also putting pressure on building owners to design loading and common areas that can handle the onslaught. With hundreds of residents now buying 10 or 20 percent of their goods online, a concierge who used to handle a flower delivery or two now may be running the equivalent of a package sort center in the building lobby.

“Some of the changes brought about by the rise in e-commerce have the potential to reduce costs and carbon dioxide and improve livability, but we need better planning and exchange to ensure these opportunities are harnessed,” said civil and environmental engineering associate professor , who directs the transportation & logistics center, known as SCTL.

“Seattle is a great location for this living laboratory because we have urban growth, geographic constraints and profound behavioral changes in the way people are buying things they need for daily life,” she said.

At the same time, the the Urban Freight Lab and its industry members will investigate are applicable to other cities around the country.

“We have more than 300 Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack stores — many in dense urban settings with a range of delivery settings, including common docks and unique situations,” said Loren VandenBerghe, director of transportation at Nordstrom. “We are always interested in ways to better support our stores so we can better serve our customers. The SCTL’s efforts will be beneficial for us to glean some new best practices and actively participate in creating solutions so we can continue to do so.”

SDOT director Scott Kubly on Wednesday announced a $285,000, 3-year research collaboration with the Urban Freight Lab that may grow over time.

“From the first mile to the last fifty feet, freight delivery is changing,” Kubly said. “For big trucks coming out of the Port of Seattle and small trucks delivering to people’s homes and businesses, this joint project will address the rapidly evolving world of freight movement.”

As an initial research question, the 91̽��engineers, SDOT and lab members will focus on the “final 50 feet” challenge, or the last leg of a delivery. It begins at the point where a delivery driver leaves a truck or vehicle on a street, alley or loading bay and extends through a privately owned building into a residential lobby or commercial area.

Students and researchers will first map existing freight infrastructure like private loading bays, as the city doesn’t have complete information about where those exist, and document how deliveries are being managed in the real world.

They’ll also test solutions — from strategies to manage curb space or alleys differently to centralized drop-off lockers — to see how they work both in simulations and in the real world. Off-hours deliveries, for instance, can alleviate traffic and parking headaches. But would that noise disturb residents, or add to failed deliveries?

Eventually, the research team will develop an “Urban Freight Score” — similar to that rates walkability for pedestrians — to evaluate the ability of trucks to access different locations around Seattle.

The new lab will draw on student expertise and research capacity from associated faculty members, as well as the UW’s , which combines business and engineering courses, exposes students to supply chain leaders at leading companies and allows students to work on a real-world operational issue.

“I’ve had the opportunity to work with the 91̽��since the inception of the Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Master’s program,” said John Thelan, Costco’s Senior Vice President, Depot and Traffic. “They are a well-educated and very focused group. It’s a pleasure to invest in the future of such-high caliber students by forming this strategic partnership with the program.”

Compared to other supply chain research programs around the country, the Urban Freight Lab is unique in bringing together stakeholders that manage both public and private aspects of urban deliveries, Goodchild said.

UPS and other freight carriers, for instance, can use sophisticated technologies to manage their own operations and run their own warehouses as profitably as possible, she said. But once a truck hits a city street, all bets are off.

“The problems where we can be of most value occur where a private company has to use public space or share public space – they can’t control that,” Goodchild said. “The ‘final 50 feet’ highlights the challenge of coordinating across numerous, diverse stakeholders. It’s a problem that isn’t going to solve itself and no one can solve independently.”

For more information, contact Goodchild at annegood@uw.edu or SCTL’s chief operating officer Barb Ivanov at ivanovb@uw.edu.