Publications

Summary:
This life cycle assessment case study puts the supply chain contribution of transportation to greenhouse gas emissions in context with other contributors using American wheat grain as a representative product. Multiple locations, species and routes to market are investigated.

Summary:
As one of the nation’s first zero-emissions last-mile delivery pilots, the Seattle Neighborhood Delivery Hub served as a testbed for innovative sustainable urban logistics strategies on the ground in Seattle’s dense Uptown neighborhood.

Summary:
Growing pressure to limit greenhouse gas emissions is changing the way businesses operate. This paper presents the trade-offs between cost, service quality (represented by time window guarantees), and emissions of an urban pickup and delivery system under these changing pressures. A model, developed by the authors in ArcGIS, is used to evaluate these trade-offs for a specific case study involving a real fleet with specific operational characteristics.

Summary:
In recent years, e-commerce has dramatically increased deliveries to residential areas. The rise in delivery vehicle activity creates externalities for the transportation system, including congestion, competition for parking space, and emissions. Common carrier lockers have emerged as a way to manage these effects by consolidating deliveries, but they remain largely untested in the United States.

Summary:
While recent urban planning efforts have focused on smart growth development and management of growth into developed areas, the research community has not examined the impacts of these development patterns on urban goods movement. Successful implementation of growth strategies has multiple environmental and social benefits, but it also raises the demand for intraurban goods movement, potentially increasing conflicts between modes of travel and worsening air quality.

Summary:
The objectives of this project are to develop and implement a technology solution to support research, development, and demonstration of data processing techniques, models, simulations, a smart phone application, and a visual-confirmation system to: Reduce delivery vehicle parking seeking behavior by approximately 20% in the pilot test area, by returning current and predicted load/unload space occupancy information to users on a web-based and/or mobile platform, to inform real-time parking decis…

Summary:
A case study of the University of Washington Mailing Services, which operates a heterogeneous fleet of vehicles, provides insight into the impact of operational changes on cost, service quality, and emissions. An emissions minimization problem was formulated and solutions were identified with a creation and local search algorithm based on the I1 and 2-opts heuristics.

Summary:
This paper discusses how to promote high-speed rail (HSR) freight business by solving the congestion problem. First, we define the existing operation modes in China and propose the idea of relieving congestion by reserving more carriages of HSR passenger trains for freight between cities with large potential volume or small capacity.

Summary:
This study performed an empirical analysis to evaluate the implementation of a cargo e-bike delivery system pilot tested by the United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) in Seattle, Washington. During the pilot, a cargo e-bike with a removable cargo container was used to perform last-mile deliveries in downtown Seattle. Cargo containers were pre-loaded daily at the UPS Seattle depot and loaded onto a trailer, which was then carried to a parking lot in downtown.

Summary:
To address the accessibility and sustainability challenges of urban logistics it is important to consider urban logistics from a number of perspectives. This includes considering: spatial context i.e. not focusing solely on the urban center or core but also in terms of actions taken in broader logistics and supply chain management. stakeholders i.e. including all key decision makers and constituents.

Summary:
This research scan revealed a lack of an established and widely accepted definition for the concept of consolidation centers or microhubs. Many recent implementations of urban freight consolidation have focused on bundling goods close to the delivery point by creating logistical platforms in the heart of urban areas. These have shared a key purpose: to avoid freight vehicles traveling into urban centers with partial loads.

Summary:
This three-year project supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Vehicle Technologies Office has the potential to radically improve the urban freight system in ways that help both the public and private sectors.

Summary:
The objectives of this project are to develop and implement a technology solution to support research, development, and demonstration of data processing techniques, models, simulations, a smart phone application, and a visual-confirmation system to: Reduce delivery vehicle parking seeking behavior by approximately 20% in the pilot test area, by returning current and predicted load/unload space occupancy information to users on a web-based and/or mobile platform, to inform real-time parking decis…

Summary:
Green loading zones (GLZs) are curb spaces dedicated to the use of electric or alternative fuel (“green”) delivery vehicles. Some US cities have begun piloting GLZs to incentivize companies to purchase and operate more green vehicles. However, there are several questions to be answered prior to a GLZ implementation, including siting, potential users, and their willing to pay.

Summary:
This research offers a novel formulation for including emissions into fleet assignment and vehicle routing and for the trade-offs faced by fleet operators between cost, emissions, and service quality. This approach enables evaluation of the impact of a variety of internal changes (e.g. time window schemes) and external policies (e.g. spatial restrictions), and enables comparisons of the relative impacts on fleet emissions.