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Urban Freight Lab

Research Keyword: Loading and unloading operations

Paper

Evaluation of Bicyclist Physiological Response and Visual Attention in Commercial Vehicle Loading Zones

 
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URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2023.11.018
Publication: Journal of Safety Research
Publication Date: 2023
Summary:

With growing freight operations throughout the world, there is a push for transportation systems to accommodate trucks during loading and unloading operations. Currently, many urban locations do not provide loading and unloading zones, which results in trucks parking in places that obstruct bicyclist’s roadway infrastructure (e.g., bicycle lanes).

Method
To understand the implications of these truck operations, a bicycle simulation experiment was designed to evaluate the impact of commercial vehicle loading and unloading activities on safe and efficient bicycle operations in a shared urban roadway environment. A fully counterbalanced, partially randomized, factorial design was chosen to explore three independent variables: commercial vehicle loading zone (CVLZ) sizes with three levels (i.e., no CVLZ, Min CVLZ, and Max CVLZ), courier position with three levels (i.e., no courier, behind the truck, beside the truck), and with and without loading accessories. Bicyclist’s physiological response and eye tracking were used as performance measures. Data were obtained from 48 participants, resulting in 864 observations in 18 experimental scenarios using linear mixed-effects models (LMM).

Results
Results from the LMMs suggest that loading zone size and courier position had the greatest effect on bicyclist’s physiological responses. Bicyclists had approximately two peaks-per-minute higher when riding in the condition that included no CVLZ and courier on the side compared to the base conditions (i.e., Max CVLZ and no courier). Additionally, when the courier was beside the truck, bicyclist’s eye fixation durations (sec) were one (s) greater than when the courier was located behind the truck, indicating that bicyclists were more alert as they passed by the courier. The presence of accessories had the lowest influence on both bicyclists’ physiological response and eye tracking measures.

Practical Applications
These findings could support better roadway and CVLZ design guidelines, which will allow our urban street system to operate more efficiently, safely, and reliable for all users.

Authors: Dr. Ed McCormackDr. Anne Goodchild, Hisham Jashami, Douglas Cobb, Ivan Sinkus, Yujun Liu, David Hurwitz
Recommended Citation:
Jashami, Hisham, Douglas Cobb, Ivan Sinkus, Yujun Liu, Edward McCormack, Anne Goodchild, and David Hurwitz. “Evaluation of Bicyclist Physiological Response and Visual Attention in Commercial Vehicle Loading Zones.” Journal of Safety Research. Elsevier BV, December 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsr.2023.11.018
Article

The Freight of the West

 
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URL: https://www.polisnetwork.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/tc9-dec2017_lo.pdf
Publication: Thinking Cities
Volume: December 2017
Pages: 82-85
Publication Date: 2017
Summary:

More than 80 percent of Americans have purchased goods online and, in 2016, more than 8 percent of all retail sales in the U.S. took place online. The growth of ecommerce is putting increasing pressure on local governments to rethink how they manage street curb parking and alley operations for trucks and other delivery vehicles. It is also forcing building developers and managers to plan for the influx of online goods.

To develop practical solutions to these problems, in 2016 the University of Washington launched the Urban Freight Lab (UFL), a partnership between private and public industry stakeholders. The UFL provides a place for companies and public agencies to work together to develop and ground-test low-cost, promising solutions to deliver these goods while maintaining livability and economic vitality.

As part of this research effort, a three-year strategic research partnership with the City of Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) has been established to advance understanding of urban goods movement in support of the City’s goals for safe, predictable and efficient goods movement and economic vibrancy.

By entering into a long-term strategic partnership with the university and industry, SDOT demonstrated its interest in developing innovative solutions to achieve their policy goals. The city’s willingness to pilot test and potentially adopt solutions that provided both public and private good was essential in attracting private sector firms to engage fully in the work.

The Urban Freight Lab

In 2016, the Urban Freight Lab recruited founding industry members from Charlie’s Produce, Costco Wholesale, Nordstrom, UPS, and the United States Postal Service (USPS) to develop solutions to improve the way goods are delivered in the urban environment.

Private sector members of the Urban Freight Lab at the University of Washington, in partnership with SDOT, are using a systems engineering approach to solve delivery problems that overlap the spheres of control of the city and business sector.

The Lab has created a multi-year strategic research plan with principles and innovative approaches to produce evidence-based improvement strategies.

The role of the Urban Freight Lab is to be a living laboratory where potential solutions are generated, evaluated, and then pilot-tested on real city streets. Members provide clear and open input as to whether proposed solutions are sustainable in their and other firms’ business models.

The Final 50 Feet

The Urban Freight Lab and its members have defined and focused on the Final 50 Feet; the urban supply chain segment that begins where delivery vehicles park at the curb, alley or in a building’s freight parking space. It tracks the delivery process inside buildings and ends at the receipt of goods by the receiver. The Final 50 Feet concept represents the first time that the Lab have identified the importance of analyzing deliveries moving along the street grid and in cities’ vertical space (office, hotel, retail and residential towers) as a unified goods delivery system.

Development of the Final 50 Feet concept is the necessary first step in defining rigorous, goal-oriented improvement teams that can take coordinated action to reduce truck trips, delivery delays, cost, emissions, and improve delivery service to tenants and consumers. It provides them with the ability to analyze and improve the process flows meaningfully from the beginning-to-end of the last piece of the urban goods system.

The Urban Freight Lab members and SDOT have identified two priority goals, with both public and private benefits, for the 2017-2020 research partnership:

  1. Reduce the number of failed first delivery attempts. The failed first delivery can be as high as 15 percent. Benefits of reducing failed first deliveries include:
    • Improve urban online shoppers’ experiences and protect retailers’ brands;
    • Cut business costs for the retail sector and logistics firms;
    • Lower traffic congestion in cities, as delivery trucks could make up to 15 percent fewer trips while still completing the same number of deliveries.
  2. Reduce dwell time. The time a truck is parked in a load/ unload space. There are both public and private benefits to reaching this goal, including:
    • Lower costs for delivery firms, and therefore potentially lower costs for their customers;
    • Better utilization of public and private truck load/unload spaces;
    • Less congestion, as spaces turn over more quickly.

Overview of the Innovative Approaches Taken to Identify and Quantitatively Assess the Final 50 Feet of the Urban Goods Delivery System

Building the first comprehensive database of urban off-street infrastructure for delivery and pick-up operations

The urban goods delivery system includes both public and private facilities. While on-street parking facilities are well documented in Seattle’s databases, facilities out of the public right of way (i.e. privately held) are not. SCTL research assistants, developed a ground-truthed data collection method to build a comprehensive database inventory, capturing geospatial locations and documenting the visible features of all private freight parking infrastructure in five urban centers in the Seattle area.

For this task, the team collaborated with one of the private carrier members of the Urban Freight Lab to further improve the accuracy of the data collection method. Carrier drivers with deep knowledge of city routes and infrastructure, review the closed door locations.

This review allowed the Lab to rule out 98 percent (206) of the locations behind closed doors, reducing uncertainty in the final database from 38 percent to less than 1 percent.

Researchers found that 87 percent of buildings in the City’s dense urban centers are completely reliant on nearby public commercial vehicle load zones (CVLZs) and alley truck load/unload spaces to receive goods deliveries. These buildings do not have underground or adjacent freight bays on their property.

Building a delivery process flow for delivery inside the building environment

The Lab created detailed process flow maps of the Final 50’ in and around five prototype city buildings in Seattle, Washington.

The team collected original data by following delivery persons from the buildings’ freight bays or nearby commercial vehicle zones (CVLZs) into each of the buildings, until delivery was completed or the return to the truck when there was a failed delivery. The Lab designed and built an application for collectors to enter the precise time that the delivery people began and ended each process step. The team then collected data for up to a week in peak delivery periods for each building. They analyzed the range and average of delay in the process steps to understand where improvement strategies will have the most significant ability to achieve project goals (13). Based on this analysis, the Lab found that the greatest opportunities to reduce the number of failed first deliveries and dwell time in truck load/unload spaces are inside buildings when delivery persons:

  • Interact with security personnel; and
  • Attempt to locate tenants.

In the next phase of the Final 50 Feet project, the Urban Freight Lab and SDOT will pilot test promising improvement strategies in and on the streets around the Seattle Municipal Tower over four weeks.

Benefits

Final 50’ project findings will be used to provide decision support to city officials and private-sector firms managing scarce resources. By applying systems engineering and evidence-based planning, we can make receiving online goods as efficient as ordering them – without clogging city streets and curb space.

We have received requests from many other cities, including Washington, D.C., to share results and lessons learned during the Freight Master Plan development process and early actions coming out of this three-year program. Seattle is committed to being a leader in urban goods policy and problem-solving and keeping our economy thriving.

According to City of Seattle officials Mr. Christopher Eaves and Ms. Jude Willcher, “Seattle is one fastest growing cities in the country. The Seattle Department of Transportation is committed meeting the urban goods delivery challenges facing most big cities in the U.S. 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 building, as well as initiate strategic research to mine new data to improve and inform new construction designs that support freight and delivery in the city. And we are incredibly grateful to have found a strong and innovative partner in the UW Freight Lab and SCTL”.

Authors: Urban Freight Lab
Recommended Citation:
Urban Freight Lab. “The freight of the West” Thinking Cities Magazine, December 2017, 82-85

A Data-Driven Simulation Tool for Dynamic Curb Planning and Management

Project Budget: $2.9M (UW amount: $500k)

Lead Institution:

  • Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL)

Partner Institutions:

  • Urban Freight Lab (UFL), University of Washington
  • Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)
  • Lacuna Technologies, Inc. (Lacuna)
  • National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Summary:

Curbs are a critical interfacing layer between movement and arrival in urban areas—the layer at which people and goods transition from travel to arrival—representing a primary point of resistance when joining and leaving the transportation network. Traditionally, curb spaces are statically supplied, priced, and zoned for specific usage (e.g., paid parking, commercial/passenger loading, or bus stops). In response to the growing demand for curb space, some cities are starting to be more intentional about defining curb usage. Examples of curb demand include not only traditional parking and delivery needs, but today include things like curb access requirements generated by micro delivery services, active transportation modes, and transportation network companies. And now due to the pandemic, increased demand comes from food/grocery pick-up/drop-off activities, as well as outdoor business use of curb space (e.g., outdoor restaurant seating).

Heightened demand and changing expectations for finite curb resources necessitates the implementation of new and dynamic curb management capabilities so that local decision-makers have the tools needed to improve occupancy and throughput while reducing the types of traffic disruptions that result from parking search and space maneuvering activities.

However, municipalities and cities currently lack tools that allow them to simulate the effectiveness of potential dynamic curb management policies to understand how the available control variables (e.g. price or curb space supply) can be modified to influence curb usage outcomes. On the other hand, transportation authorities and fleet managers lack the needed signage or communication platforms to effectively communicate the availability of curb space for a specified use, price, and time at scales beyond centralized lots and garages.

This project aims to develop a city-scale dynamic curb use simulation tool and an open-source curb management platform. The envisioned simulation and management capabilities will include dynamically and concurrently controlling price, number of spaces, allowed parking duration, time of use or reservation, and curb space use type (e.g., dynamic curb space rezoning based on supply and demand).

Project Objectives:

Project objectives include the following:

  • Objective 1:  The team will develop a microscale curb simulation tool to model behavior of individual vehicles with different purposes at the curb along a blockface over time of day, accounting for price, supply, function, and maximum parking time.
  • Objective 2: The team will integrate the microscale simulation tool with the LBNL’s mesoscale (city-scale) traffic simulation tool, BEAM, for simulating traffic impacts of alternative curb management strategies and their effects on citywide and regional traffic, in terms of (1) travel time, (2) throughput (people and goods) into and out of urban centers, (3) reduced energy use and emissions (from parking search and congestion), and (4) curb space utilization.
  • Objective 3: The team will develop a dynamic curbspace allocation controller for various curb users, either municipal or commercial, for the purpose of a demonstration and pilot.
  • Objective 4: The team will design, implement and test a curbside resource usage platform for fleet vehicles communications at commercial vehicle load zones (CVLZs), passenger load zones (PLZs), and transit stops.
  • Objective 5: The team will perform demonstrations with stakeholder agencies and provide pathways to practice for promising curb allocation policies.
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. 

Seattle Center City Alley Infrastructure Inventory and Occupancy Study 2018 (Task Order 4)

The Urban Freight Lab conducted an alley inventory and truck load/unload occupancy study for the City of Seattle. Researchers collected data identifying the locations and infrastructure characteristics of alleys within Seattle’s One Center City planning area, which includes the downtown, uptown, South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, and First Hill urban centers. The resulting alley database includes GIS coordinates for both ends of each alley, geometric and traffic attributes, and photos. Researchers also observed all truck load/unload activity in selected alleys to determine minutes vacant and minutes occupied by trucks, vans, passenger vehicles, and cargo bikes. The researchers then developed alley management recommendations to promote safe, sustainable, and efficient goods delivery and pick-up.

Key Findings

The first key finding of this study is that more than 90% of Center City alleys are only one-lane wide. This surprising fact creates an upper limit on alley parking capacity, as each alley can functionally hold only one or two vehicles at a time. Because there is no room to pass by, when a truck, van, or car parks it blocks all other vehicles from using the alley. When commercial vehicle drivers see that an alley is blocked they will not enter it, as their only way out would be to back up into street traffic. Seattle Municipal code prohibits this, as well as backing up into an alley, for safety reasons.

When informed by the second key finding‚ 68% of vehicles in the alley occupancy study parked there for 15 minutes or less‚ it is clear that moving vehicles through alleys in short time increments is the only reasonable path to increase productivity. As one parked vehicle operationally blocks the entire alley, the goal of new alley policies and strategies should be to reduce the amount of time alleys are blocked to additional users.

The study surfaces four additional key findings:

  1. 87% of all vehicles in the 7 alleys studied parked for 30 minutes or less. Given the imperative to move alley traffic quickly, vehicles that need more parking time must be moved out of the alleys and onto the curb where they don’t block others.
  2. 15% of alleys’ pavement condition is so poor that delivery workers can’t pass through with loaded hand carts. Although trucks can drive over fairly uneven pavement without difficulty, it is not the case for delivery people walking with fully loaded handcarts. The alley pavement rating was done with a qualitative visual inspection to identify obvious problems; more detailed measurements would be needed to fully assess conditions.
  3. 73% of Center City area alleys contain entrances to passenger parking facilities. Placing garage entrances in alleys has been a city policy goal for years. But it increases the frequency of cars in alleys and adds demands on alley use. Understanding why cars are queuing for passenger garages located off alleys, and providing incentives and disincentives to reduce that, would help make alleys more productive.
  4. Alleys are vacant about half of the time during the business day. While at first blush this suggests ample capacity, the fact that an alley can only hold one-to-two parked trucks at a time means alleys are limited operationally and therefore are not a viable alternative to replace the use of curb CVLZs on city streets.

These findings indicate that, due to the fixed alley width constraint, load/unload space inside Seattle’s existing Center City area alleys is insufficient to meet additional future demand.

Chapter

Are Cities’ Delivery Spaces in the Right Places? Mapping Truck Load/Unload Locations

 
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URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119425526.ch21
Publication: City Logistics 2: Modeling and Planning Initiatives (Proceedings of the 2017 International Conference on City Logistics)
Volume: 2
Pages: 351-368
Publication Date: 2018
Summary:

Two converging trends – the rise of e‐commerce and urban population growth – challenge cities facing competing uses for road, curb and alley space. The University of Washington has formed a living Urban Freight Lab to solve city logistics problems that cross private and public sector boundaries. To assess the capacity of the city’s truck load/unload spaces, the lab collected GIS coordinates for private truck loading bays, and combined them with public GIS layers to create a comprehensive map of the city’s truck parking infrastructure. The chapter offers a practical approach to identify useful existent urban GIS data for little or no cost; collect original granular urban truck data for private freight bays and loading docks; and overlay the existing GIS layers and a new layer to study city‐wide truck parking capacity. The Urban Freight Lab’s first research project is addressing the “Final 50 Feet” of the urban delivery system.

Authors: Barbara IvanovDr. Ed McCormackDr. Anne GoodchildJosé Luis Machado LeónGabriela Girón-Valderrama, Anne Moudon, Jason Scully
Recommended Citation:
Goodchild, Anne, Barb Ivanov, Ed McCormack, Anne Moudon, Jason Scully, José Machado Leon, and Gabriela Giron Valderrama. Are Cities' Delivery Spaces in the Right Places? Mapping Truck Load/Unload Locations: Modeling and Planning Initiatives. City Logistics 2: Modeling and Planning Initiatives (2018): 351-368. 10.1002/9781119425526.ch21
Report

Supporting Comprehensive Urban Freight Planning by Mapping Private Load and Unload Facilities

 
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Publication Date: 2023
Summary:

Freight load and unload facilities located off the public right-of-way are typically not documented in publicly available databases. Without detailed knowledge of these facilities, i.e. private freight load and unload infrastructure, cities are limited in their ability to complete system-wide freight planning and to comprehensively evaluate the total supply of load and unload spaces in the city. To address this challenge, this research describes the development and application of a data collection methodology and a typology of private freight load/unload facilities for their inventory and documentation in dense urban centers.

The tools developed in this research are practice-ready and can be implemented in other cities to support research, policy and planning approaches that aim to improve the urban freight system. Assessment of the degree of harmonization between the current delivery vehicle dimensions and infrastructure they service is a crucial step of any policy that addresses private freight load/unload infrastructures. This includes providing: the adequate access dimensions, capacity to accommodate the volume and vehicle type, and an effective connecting design between the facilities and the public right-of-way.

A case study in Downtown Seattle found more than 337 private freight facilities for loading/unloading of goods but that translates into only 5% of the buildings in the densest areas of the city had these facilities. Alleys were found to play a critical role since 36% of this freight infrastructure was accessed through alleys.

This research results in the first urban inventory of private freight load/unload infrastructure, which has been shown to be a valuable resource for the City of Seattle that can be used to better understand and plan for the urban freight system.

Authors: José Luis Machado LeónGabriela Girón-ValderramaDr. Anne GoodchildDr. Ed McCormack
Recommended Citation:
Machado León, J., Girón-Valderrama, G., Goodchild, A., & McCormack, E. Supporting Comprehensive Urban Freight Planning by Mapping Private Load and Unload Facilities (2023).
Report

Final Report: Technology Integration to Gain Commercial Efficiency for the Urban Goods Delivery System, Meet Future Demand for City Passenger and Delivery Load/Unload Spaces, and Reduce Energy Consumption

 
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Publication Date: 2022
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. Working from 2018-2021, project researchers at the University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab and collaborators at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have produced key data, tested technologies in complex urban settings, developed a prototype parking availability app, and helped close major knowledge gaps.

All the fruits of this project can be harnessed to help cities better understand, support and actively manage truck load/unload operations and their urban freight transport infrastructure. Project learnings and tools can be used to help make goods delivery firms more efficient by reducing miles traveled and the time it takes to complete deliveries, benefitting businesses and residents who rely on the urban freight system for supplies of goods. And, ultimately, these project learnings and tools can be used to make cities more livable by minimizing wasted travel, which, in turn, contributes to reductions in fuel consumption and emissions.

Cities today are challenged to effectively and efficiently manage their infrastructure to absorb the impacts of ever-increasing e-commerce-fueled delivery demand. All delivery trucks need to park somewhere to unload and load. Yet today’s delivery drivers have no visibility on available parking until they arrive at a site, which may be full. That means they can wind up cruising for parking, which wastes time and fuel and contributes to congestion. Once drivers do find parking, the faster they can unload at the spot, the faster they free up space for other drivers, helping others avoid circling for parking. This makes the parking space—and thus the greater load/unload network—more productive.

To this end, the research team successfully met the project’s three goals, developing and piloting strategies and technologies to:

  • Reduce parking-seeking behavior in the study area by 20%
  • Reduce parcel truck dwell time (the time a truck spends in a spot to load/unload) in the study area by 30%
  • Increase curb space, alley space, and private loading bay occupancy rates in the study area

The research team met these goals by creating and piloting on Seattle streets OpenPark, a first-of-its-kind real-time and forecasting curb parking app customized for commercial delivery drivers—giving drivers the “missing link” in their commonly used routing tools that tell them how best to get to delivery locations, but not what parking is available to use when they get there. Installing in-ground sensors on commercial vehicle load zones (CVLZs) and passenger load zones (PLZs) in the 10-block study area in Seattle’s downtown neighborhood of Belltown let researchers glean real-time curb parking data. The research team also met project goals by piloting three parcel lockers in public and private spaces open to any delivery carrier, creating a consolidated delivery hub that lets drivers complete deliveries faster and spend less time parked. Researchers collected and analyzed data to produce the first empirical, robust, statistically significant results as to the impact of the lockers, and app, on on-the-ground operations. In addition to collecting and analyzing sensor and other real-time and historical data, researchers rode along with delivery drivers to confirm real-world routing and parking behavior. Researchers also surveyed building managers on their private loading bay operations to understand how to boost usage.

Key findings that provide needed context for piloting promising urban delivery solutions:

  • After developing a novel model using GPS data to measure parking-seeking behavior, researchers were able to quantify that, on average, a delivery driver spends 28% of travel time searching for parking, totaling on average one hour per day for a parcel delivery driver. This project offers the first empirical proof of delivery drivers’ cruising for parking.
  • While many working models to date have assumed that urban delivery drivers always choose to double-park (unauthorized parking in the travel lane), this study found that behavior is rare: Double parking happened less than 5% of the times drivers parked.
  • That said, drivers do not always park where they are supposed to. The research team found that CVLZ parking took place approximately 50% of the time. The remaining 50% included mostly parking in “unauthorized” curb spaces, including no-parking zones, bus zones, entrances/exits of parking garages, etc.
  • Researcher ride-alongs with delivery drivers revealed parking behaviors other than unauthorized parking that waste valuable time and fuel: re-routing (after failing to find a desired space, giving up and doubling back to the delivery destination later in the day) and queuing (temporarily parking in an alternate location and waiting until the desired space becomes available).
  • Some 13% of all parking events in CVLZ spaces were estimated as overstays; the figure was 80% of all parking events in PLZ spaces. So, the curb is not being used efficiently or as the city intended as many parking events exceed the posted time limit.
  • Meantime, there is unused off-street capacity that could be tapped in Seattle’s Central Business District. Estimates show private loading bays could increase area parking capacity for commercial vehicles by at least 50%. But surveys show reported use of loading bays is low and property managers have little incentive to maximize it. Property managers find curb loading zones more convenient; it seems delivery drivers do, too, as they choose to park at the curb even when loading bay space is available.

Key findings from the technology and strategies employed:

Carriers give commercial drivers routing tools that optimize delivery routes by considering travel distance and (often) traffic patterns—but not details on parking availability. Limited parking availability can lead to significant driver delays through cruising for parking or rerouting, and today’s drivers are largely left on their own to assess and manage their parking situation as they pull up to deliver.

The project team worked closely with the City of Seattle to obtain permission to install parking sensors in the roadway and communications equipment to relay sensor data to project servers. The team also developed a fully functional and open application that offers both real-time parking availability and near-time prediction of parking availability, letting drivers pick forecasts 5, 15, or 30 minutes into the future depending on when the driver expects to arrive at the delivery destination. Drivers can also enter their vehicle length to customize availability information.

After developing, modeling, and piloting the real-time and forecasting parking app, researchers conducted an experiment to determine how use of the app impacted driver behavior and transportation outcomes. They found that:

  • Having access to parking availability via the app resulted in a 28% decrease in the time drivers spent cruising for parking. Exceeding our initial goal of reducing parking seeking behavior by 20%. In the study experiment, all drivers had the same 20-foot delivery van and the same number of randomly sampled delivery addresses in the study area. But some drivers had access to the app; others did not.
  • Preliminary results based on historic routing data show that the use of such a real-time curb parking information and prediction app can reduce route time by approximately 1.5%. An analysis collected historic parking occupancy and cruising information and integrated it into a model that was then used to revise scheduling and routing. This model optimally routed vehicles to minimize total driving and cruising time. However, since the urban environment is complex and consists of many random elements, results based on historic data underly a high amount of randomness. Analysis on synthetic routes suggests including parking availability in routing systems is especially promising for routes with high delivery density and with stops where the cruising time delays vary a lot along the planned time horizon; here, route time savings can reach approximately 20.4% — conditions outlined in the report.
  • The central tradeoff among four approaches to parking app architecture going forward is cost and accuracy. The research team found that it is possible to train machine learning models using only data from curb occupancy sensors and reach a higher than 90% accuracy. Training of state-space models (those using inputs such as time of day, day of the week, and location to predict future parking availability) is computationally inexpensive, but these models offer limited accuracy. In contrast, deep-learning models are highly accurate but computationally expensive and difficult to use on streaming data.

Common carrier lockers create delivery density, helping delivery people complete their work faster. The driver parks next to the locker system, loads packages into it, and returns to the truck. When delivery people spend less time going door-to-door (or floor-to-floor inside a building), it cuts the time their truck needs to be parked, increasing turnover and adding parking capacity in crowded cities. This project piloted and collected data on common carrier lockers in three study area buildings.

From piloting the common carrier parcel lockers, researchers found that:

  • The implementation of the parcel locker allowed delivery drivers to increase productivity: 40%-60% reduction in time spent in the building and 33% reduction in vehicle dwell time at the curb.
Authors: Dr. Anne GoodchildDr. Giacomo Dalla ChiaraFiete KruteinDr. Andisheh RanjbariDr. Ed McCormackElizabeth Guzy, Dr. Vinay Amatya (PNNL), Ms. Amelia Bleeker (PNNL), Dr. Milan Jain (PNNL)
Recommended Citation:
Urban Freight Lab (2022). Final Report: Technology Integration to Gain Commercial Efficiency for the Urban Goods Delivery System.
Paper

Providing Curb Availability Information to Delivery Drivers Reduces Cruising for Parking

 
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URL: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23987-z
Publication: Scientific Reports
Volume: (2022) 12:19355
Publication Date: 2022
Summary:

Delivery vehicle drivers are experiencing increasing challenges in finding available curb space to park in urban areas, which increases instances of cruising for parking and parking in unauthorized spaces. Policies traditionally used to reduce cruising for parking for passenger vehicles, such as parking fees and congestion pricing, are not effective at changing delivery drivers’ travel and parking behaviors.

Intelligent parking systems that use real-time curb availability information to better route and park vehicles can reduce cruising for parking, but they have never been tested for delivery vehicle drivers.

This study tested whether providing real-time curb availability information to delivery drivers reduces the travel time and distance spent cruising for parking. A curb parking information system deployed in a study area in Seattle, Wash., displayed real-time curb availabilities on a mobile app called OpenPark. A controlled experiment assigned drivers’ deliveries in the study area with and without access to OpenPark.

The data collected showed that when curb availability information was provided to drivers, their cruising for parking time significantly decreased by 27.9 percent, and their cruising distance decreased by 12.4 percent. These results demonstrate the potential for implementing intelligent parking systems to improve the efficiency of urban logistics systems.

Authors: Dr. Giacomo Dalla ChiaraFiete KruteinDr. Andisheh RanjbariDr. Anne Goodchild
Recommended Citation:
Dalla Chiara, G., Krutein, K.F., Ranjbari, A. et al. Providing curb availability information to delivery drivers reduces cruising for parking. Sci Rep 12, 19355 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23987-z