Research Keyword: Failed delivery

A failed or unsuccessful delivery occurs when a carrier’s attempt to deliver an order is unsuccessful due to various reasons including an incorrect or incomplete address, errors made by the carrier, a recall by the sender, unsuccessful retrieval from a parcel locker, customer refusal, damaged packaging, an inability to find a secure location for delivery, or difficulty locating the recipient when a signature is required, among others.

The consequences of failed deliveries have a significant impact, with the retailer bearing the most substantial burden due to sunk costs associated with the shipment and return, as well as its effect on customer experience and repurchase rates.

Article

More Online Shopping Means More Delivery Trucks. Are Cities Ready?

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URL: https://theconversation.com/more-online-shopping-means-more-delivery-trucks-are-cities-ready-67686

Publication: The Conversation

Publication Date: 2016

Summary:

Two converging trends — the rise of e-commerce and urban population growth — are creating big challenges for cities. Online shoppers are learning to expect the urban freight delivery system to bring them whatever they want, wherever they want it, within one to two hours. That’s especially true during the holidays, as shipping companies hustle to deliver gift orders on time.

City managers and policymakers were already grappling with high demand and competing uses for scarce road, curb, and sidewalk space. If cities do not act quickly to revamp the way they manage increasing numbers of commercial vehicles unloading goods in streets and alleys and into buildings, they will drown in a sea of double-parked trucks.

The University of Washington has formed a new Urban Freight Lab to solve delivery system problems that cities and the business sector cannot handle on their own. Funders of this long-term strategic research partnership include the City of Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and five founding corporate members: Costco, FedEx, Nordstrom, UPS, and the U.S. Postal Service.

The core problem facing cities is that they are trying to manage their part of a sophisticated data-powered 21st-century delivery system with tools designed for the 1800s — and they are often trying to do it alone. Consumers can order groceries, clothes, and electronics with a click, but most cities only have a stripe of colored paint to manage truck parking at the curb. The Urban Freight Lab brings building managers, retailers, logistics and tech firms, and city government together to do applied research and develop advanced solutions.

Moving more goods, more quickly

We have reached the point where millions of people who live and work in cities purchase more than half of their goods online. This trend is putting tremendous pressure on local governments to rethink how they manage street curb parking and alley operations for trucks and other delivery vehicles. It also forces building operators to plan for the influx of online goods. A few years ago, building concierges may have received a few flower bouquets. Now many are sorting and storing groceries and other goods for hundreds of residents every week.

In the first quarter of 2016, almost 8 percent of total U.S. retail sales took place online. Surging growth in U.S. online sales has averaged more than 15 percent year-over-year since 2010. Black Friday web sales soared by 22 percent from 2015 to 2016.

Online shoppers’ expectations for service are also rising. Two out of three shoppers expect to be able to place an order as late as 5:00 p.m. for next-day delivery. Three out of five believe orders placed by noon should be delivered the same day, and one out of four believe orders placed by 4:00 p.m. or later should still be delivered on the same day.

City living and shopping is still all about location, location, location. People are attracted to urban neighborhoods because they prefer to walk more and drive less. Respondents in the 2015 National Multifamily Housing Council-Kingsley Apartment Resident Preferences Survey preferred walking to grocery stores and restaurants rather than driving by seven points. But this lifestyle requires merchants to deliver goods to customers’ homes, office buildings or stores close to where they live.

Smarter delivery systems

SDOT recently published Seattle’s first draft Freight Master Plan, which includes high-level strategies to improve the urban goods delivery system. But before city managers act, they need evidence to prove which concepts will deliver results.

To lay the groundwork for our research, an SCTL team led by Dr. Ed McCormack and graduate students Jose Machado Leon and Gabriela Giron surveyed 523 blocks of Seattle’s downtown (including Belltown, the commercial core, Pioneer Square and International District), South Lake Union and Uptown urban centers in the fall of 2016. They compiled GIS coordinates and infrastructure characteristics for all observable freight loading bays within buildings. Our next step is to combine this information with existing GIS layers of the city’s curbside commercial vehicle load zones and alleys to produce a complete map of Seattle’s urban delivery infrastructure.

In our first research project, the Urban Freight Lab is using data-based process improvement tools to purposefully manage both public and private operations of the Final-50-Feet space. The final 50 feet of the urban delivery system begins when a truck stops at a city-owned curb, commercial vehicle load zone or alley. It extends along sidewalks and through privately owned building freight bays, and may end in common areas within a building, such as the lobby.

One key issue is failed deliveries: Some city residents don’t receive their parcels due to theft or because they weren’t home to accept them. Could there be secure, common drop-off points for multiple carriers to use, attached to bus stops or on the sidewalk?

The most pressing issue is the lack of space for trucks to park and deliver goods downtown. It may be possible to use technology to get more use out of existing commercial vehicle load zones. For example, trucks might be able to use spaces now reserved exclusively for other uses during off-peak hours or seasons.

To analyze the fundamental problems in the urban logistics system, our research team will create process flow maps of each step in the goods delivery process for five buildings in Seattle. We will collect data and build a model to analyze “what if” scenarios for one location. Then we will pilot test several promising low-cost, high-value actions on Seattle streets in the fall of 2017. The pilots may involve actively managing city load zones and alleys to maximize truck use, or changing the way people use freight elevators.

By using information technologies and creative planning, we can make receiving online goods as efficient as ordering them — without clogging our streets or losing our packages.

Authors: Dr. Anne GoodchildBarbara Ivanov

Recommended Citation:
Goodchild, A., & Ivanov, B. (2016, December 20). More online shopping means more delivery trucks. Are cities ready? The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/more-online-shopping-means-more-delivery-trucks-are-cities-ready-67686.

Article

Where’s My Package? Common Carrier Freight Lockers Can Ease City Traffic and Prevent Failed Deliveries

URL: https://theconversation.com/wheres-my-package-common-carrier-freight-lockers-can-ease-city-traffic-and-prevent-failed-deliveries-108455

Publication: The Conversation

Publication Date: 2018

Summary:

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.

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’ 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.

When Amazon installed branded delivery lockers 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’t have something she wanted, she had to fall back on her circle of friends.

Retailers delivering to a customers’ 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.

So many stops, so little time
Like Amazon’s 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 examined the effectiveness of locating them in public spaces in dense urban areas, where they can be available to everyone.

The University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab 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’s 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.

In its first report, published in early 2018, the Lab analyzed the “Final 50 Feet” of the urban goods delivery system – 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’s loading dock or internal freight bay. From there, it follows delivery people inside urban towers, ending where customers receive their packages.

Researchers discovered two especially thorny challenges in this segment of the chain: extended “dwell time,” 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’ experiences.

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’s member companies. Instead, we decided to try creating delivery density in a single location right where the trucks unloaded.

Centralized lockers where people live and work
Accordingly, the Urban Freight Lab’s second research project pilot-tested placing a common carrier locker system in the 62-floor Seattle Municipal Tower in downtown Seattle’s financial district. This step cut the time required to make deliveries in the tower by 78 percent. The next question was where to locate more of these delivery density points, or “mini-distribution nodes,” as the study called them.

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

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.

In a survey of 185 riders at three transit stations, our lab’s third research study found strong interest in the lockers, 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.

For retailers like Nordstrom, the lockers represent a potential solution to porch piracy and other glitches associated with online shopping. “Rather than leaving the package at a door, some carriers want customers to come to their location to collect the package, while others might redeliver,” Loren VandenBerghe, director of transportation for Nordstrom, told us. “Whatever the process, the customer has to track down the package. Instead, we’d prefer to get the package in our customer’s hands when they expect it.”

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’s 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 – making it much more convenient than waiting for a truck and scanning the street for porch pirates.

Authors: Dr. Anne GoodchildBarbara Ivanov

Recommended Citation:
Goodchild, A. (2018, December 18). Where’s my package? Common carrier freight lockers can ease city traffic and prevent failed deliveries. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/wheres-my-package-common-carrier-freight-lockers-can-ease-city-traffic-and-prevent-failed-deliveries-108455

Report

The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System (Final Report)

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Publication Date: 2018

Summary:

Urban Freight Lab’s foundational report is the first assessment in any American city of the privately-owned and operated elements of the Final 50 Feet of goods delivery supply chains (the end of the supply chain, where delivery drivers must locate both parking and end customers). These include curb parking spaces, private truck freight bays and loading docks, street design, traffic control, and delivery policies and operations within buildings.

Goods delivery is an essential but little-noticed activity in urban areas. For the last 40 years, deliveries have been mostly performed by a private sector shipping industry that operates within general city traffic conditions. However, in recent years e-commerce has created a rapid increase in deliveries, which implies an explosion of activity in the future.

Meeting current and future demand is creating unprecedented challenges for shippers to meet both increased volumes and increasing customer expectations for efficient and timely delivery. Anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing demand is overwhelming goods delivery infrastructure and operations. Delivery vehicles parked in travel lanes, unloading taking place on crowded sidewalks, and commercial truck noise during late night and early morning hours are familiar stories in urban areas.

These conditions are noticeable throughout the City of Seattle as our population and employment rapidly increase. However, goods delivery issues are particularly problematic in Seattle’s high-density areas of Downtown, Belltown, South Lake Union, Pioneer Square, First Hill, Capitol Hill and Queen Anne, described as Seattle’s “Center City”. Urban goods transportation makes our economy and quality of life possible.

As the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) responds to the many travel challenges of a complex urban environment, we recognize that goods delivery needs to be better understood and supported to retain the vitality and livability of our busiest neighborhoods.

U.S. cities do not have much information about the urban goods delivery system. While public agencies have data on city streets, public transportation and designated curbside parking, the “final 50 feet” in goods delivery also utilizes private vehicles, private loading facilities, and privately-owned and operated buildings outside the traditional realm of urban planning.

Bridging the information gap between the public and private sectors requires a new way of thinking about urban systems. Specifically, it requires trusted data sharing between public and private partners, and a data-driven approach to asking and answering the right questions, to successfully meet modern urban goods delivery needs.

The Urban Freight Lab (UFL) provides a standing forum to solve a range of short-term as well as long-term strategic urban goods problem solving, that provides evidence of effectiveness before strategies are widely implemented in the City.

Authors: Urban Freight Lab

Recommended Citation:
Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center. (2018) The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System.

UPS E-Bike Delivery Pilot Test in Seattle: Analysis of Public Benefits and Costs (Task Order 6)

The City of Seattle granted a permit to United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) in fall 2018 to pilot test a new e-bike parcel delivery system in the Pioneer Square/Belltown area for one year. The Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) commissioned the Urban Freight Lab (UFL) to quantify and document the public impacts of this multimodal delivery system change in the final 50 feet of supply chains, to provide data and evidence for development of future urban freight policies.

The UFL will conduct analyses into the following research questions:

What are the total changes in VMT and emissions (PM and GHG) to all three affected cargo van routes due to the e-bike pilot test in the Pike Place Market and neighboring areas?
What is the change in the delivery van’s dwell time, e.g. the amount of time the van is parked, before and after introducing the e-bike?
How does the e-bike system affect UPS’ failed first delivery (FFD) attempt rate along the route?
If UPS begins to stage drop boxes along the route for the e-bike (instead of having to replenish from the parked trailer) what are the impacts to total VMT and emissions?
How do e-bike delivery operations impact pedestrian, other bike, and motor traffic?

Technical Report

Urban Goods Delivery Toolkit

URL: https://depts.washington.edu/toolkit/

Publication Date: 2020

Summary:

This Toolkit is designed to help transportation professionals and researchers gather key data needed to make the Final 50 Feet segment function as efficiently as possible, reducing both the time trucks park in load/unload spaces and the number of failed first delivery attempts.

In addition, the toolkit can help transportation planners, traffic engineers, freight system managers, parking and operations strategists, and researchers build a fundamental knowledge base for planning; managing parking operations; managing emergency management and response; updating traffic, land use and building codes; and modeling future scenarios and needs.

In short, the toolkit can be used to help cities meet the ever-increasing demand for trucks and other load/unload activities.

Authors: Urban Freight Lab

Recommended Citation:
Urban Freight Lab. (2020) Urban Goods Delivery Toolkit. https://depts.washington.edu/toolkit

Report

Cargo E-Bike Delivery Pilot Test in Seattle

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Publication Date: 2020

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.

Data were obtained for two study phases. In the “before-pilot” phase, data were obtained from truck routes that operated in the same areas where the cargo e-bike was proposed to operate. In the “pilot” phase, data were obtained from the cargo e-bike route and from the truck routes that simultaneously delivered in the same neighborhoods. Data were subsequently analyzed to assess the performance of the cargo e-bike system versus the traditional truck-only delivery system.

The study first analyzed data from the before-pilot phase to characterize truck delivery activity. Analysis focused on three metrics: time spent cruising for parking, delivery distance, and dwell time. The following findings were reported:

On average, a truck driver spent about 2 minutes cruising for parking for each delivery trip, which represented 28 percent of total trip time. On average, a driver spent about 50 minutes a day cruising for parking.
Most of the deliveries performed were about 30 meters (98 feet) from the vehicle stop location, which is less than the length of an average blockface in downtown Seattle (100 meters, 328 feet). Only 10 percent of deliveries were more 100 meters away from the vehicle stop location.
Most truck dwell times were around 5 minutes. However, the dwell time distribution was right-skewed, with a median dwell time of 17.5 minutes.

Three other metrics were evaluated for both the before-pilot and the pilot study phases: delivery area, number of delivery locations, and number of packages delivered and failed first delivery rate. The following results were obtained:

A comparison of the delivery areas of the trucks and the cargo e-bike before and after the pilot showed that the trucks and cargo e-bike delivered approximately in the same geographic areas, with no significant changes in the trucks’ delivery areas before and during the pilot.
The number of establishments the cargo e-bike delivered to in a single tour during the pilot phase was found to be 31 percent of the number of delivery locations visited, on average, by a truck in a single tour during the before-pilot phase, and 28 percent during the pilot phase.
During the pilot, the cargo e-bike delivered on average to five establishments per hour, representing 30 percent of the establishments visited per hour by a truck in the before-pilot phase and 25 percent during the pilot.
During the pilot, the number of establishments the cargo e-bike delivered to increased over time, suggesting a potential for improvement in the efficiency of the cargo e-bike.
The cargo e-bike delivered 24 percent of the number of packages delivered by a truck during a single tour, on average, before the pilot and 20 percent during the pilot.
Both before and during the pilot the delivery failed rate (percentage of packages that were not delivered throughout the day) was approximately 0.8 percent. The cargo e-bike experienced a statistically significantly lower failed rate of 0.5 percent with respect to the truck fail rate, with most tours experiencing no failed first deliveries.

The above reported empirical results should be interpreted only in the light of the data obtained. Moreover, some of the results are affected by the fact that the pilot coincided with the holiday season, in which above average demand was experienced. Moreover, because the pilot lasted only one month, not enough time was given for the system to run at “full-speed.”

Authors: Urban Freight Lab

Recommended Citation:
Urban Freight Lab (2020). Cargo E-Bike Delivery Pilot Test in Seattle.

Technical Report

The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System: Pilot Test of an Innovative Improvement Strategy

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URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1773/44473

Publication: Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans)

Publication Date: 2019

Summary:

This report presents a pilot test of a common carrier smart locker system — a promising strategy to reduce truck trip and failed first delivery attempts in urban buildings. The Urban Freight Lab tested this system in the 62-story Seattle Municipal Tower skyscraper in downtown Seattle.

The Urban Freight Lab identified two promising strategies for the pilot test: (1) Locker system: smaller- to medium-sized deliveries can be placed into a locker that was temporarily installed during the pilot test; and (2) Grouped-tenant-floor-drop-off-points for medium-sized items if the locker was too small or full (4-6 floor groups set up by Seattle Department of Transportation and Seattle City Light).

Users picked up their goods at the designated drop-off points. Flyers with information on drop-off-points were given to the carriers. UFL researchers evaluated the ability of the standardized second step pilot test to reduce the number of failed first delivery attempts by (1) Collecting original data to document the number of failed first delivery attempts before and after the pilot test; and (2) Comparing them to the pilot test goals.

Authors: Haena KimBarbara IvanovDr. Anne Goodchild

Recommended Citation:
Goodchild, A., Kim, H., & Ivanov, B. Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System: Pilot Test of an Innovative Improvement Strategy. (2019)

Report

The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System: Common Carrier Locker Pilot Test at the Seattle Municipal Tower

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Publication Date: 2018

Summary:

This report provides compelling evidence of the effectiveness of a new urban goods delivery system strategy: Common Carrier Locker Systems that create parcel delivery density and provide secure delivery locations in public spaces.

Common carrier locker systems are an innovative strategy because they may be used by any retailer, carrier, and goods purchaser, and placed on public property. This contrasts with branded lockers such as those operated by Amazon, UPS, and FedEx that are limited to one retailer’s or one carrier’s use. Common carrier lockers use existing smart locker technology to provide security and convenience to users.

The Common Carrier Locker System Pilot Test in the Seattle Municipal Tower was uniquely designed for multiple retailers’ and delivery firms’ use in a public space. In spring 2018, a common carrier locker system was placed in the 62-floor Seattle Municipal Tower for ten days as part of a joint research project of the Urban Freight Lab (UFL) at the University of Washington’s Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), with additional funding from the Pacific Northwest Transportation Consortium (PacTrans).

This report demonstrates common carrier lockers’ potential to reach both public and private goals by reducing dwell time (the time a truck is parked in a load/unload space in the city) and the number of failed first delivery attempts to dense urban areas. This research provides evidence that delivering multiple packages to a single location such as a locker, rather than delivering packages one-by-one to individual tenants in an urban tower increases the productivity of public and private truck load/unload spaces.

The concept for this empirical pilot test draws on prior UFL-conducted research on the Final 50 Feet of the urban goods delivery system. The Final 50 Feet is the term for the last segment of the supply chain. It begins when a truck parks in a load/unload space, continues as drivers maneuver goods along sidewalks and into urban towers to make the final delivery, and ends where the customer takes receipt of the goods.

The UFL’s 2017 research documented that of the 20 total minutes delivery drivers spent on average in the Seattle Municipal Tower, 12.2 of those minutes were spent going floor-to-floor in freight elevators and door-to-door to tenants on multiple floors. The UFL recognized that cutting those two steps from the delivery process could slash delivery time in the Tower by more than half—which translates into a substantial reduction in truck dwell time.

Authors: Haena KimDr. Ed McCormackDr. Anne GoodchildBarbara Ivanov

Recommended Citation:
Urban Freight Lab (2018). The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System: Common Carrier Locker Pilot Test at the Seattle Municipal Tower.

Paper

Delivery Process for an Office Building in the Seattle Central Business District

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URL: https://trid.trb.org/view/1497161

Publication: Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board

Volume: Transportation Research Board 97th Annual Meeting

Publication Date: 2018

Summary:

Movement of goods within a central business district (CBD) can be very constraining with high levels of congestion and insufficient curb spaces. Pick-up and delivery activities encompass a significant portion of urban goods movement and inefficient operations can negatively impact the already highly congested areas and truck dwell times. Identifying and quantifying the delivery processes within the building is often difficult.

This paper introduces a systematic approach to examine freight movement, using a process flow map with quantitative delivery times measured during the final segment of the delivery process. This paper focuses on vertical movements such as unloading/loading activities, taking freight elevators, and performing pick-up/delivery operations. This approach allows us to visualize the components of the delivery process and identify the processes that consume the most time and greatest variability. Using this method, the authors observed the delivery process flows of an office building in downtown Seattle, grouped into three major steps: 1. Entering, 2. Delivering, 3. Exiting. This visualization tool provides researchers and planners with a better understanding of the current practices in the urban freight system and helps identify the non-value-added activities and time that can unnecessarily increase the overall delivery time.

Authors: Haena KimDr. Anne Goodchild, Linda Ng Boyle

Recommended Citation:
Kim, Haena, Linda Ng Boyle, and Anne Goodchild. "Delivery Process for an Office Building in the Seattle Central Business District." Transportation Research Record 2672, no. 9 (2018): 173-183.

Report

The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System (Executive Summary)

Download PDF (1.91 MB)

Publication Date: 2018

Summary:

Two key goals have been identified early for the Final 50 Feet program:

Reducing truck time in a load/unload space in the city (“dwell time”)
Minimizing failed first package deliveries. About 8-10% of first delivery attempts in urban areas are unsuccessful, creating more return trips

Authors: Urban Freight Lab

Recommended Citation:
Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center. (2018) The Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System: Executive Summary.