DC Velocity - September 2019

Maloney about the lab’s current research initiatives.

Q Could you tell me about the work of the Urban Freight Lab? AWe have been in existence since December 2016. The group has gathered around what we have taglined the “final 50 feet,” which is the series of activities or the process flow that starts when a delivery vehicle stops. That could be at the curb, in an alley, or in an underground loading bay. It then tracks the delivery person as they make their way to the building, enter and pass through security, and go from floor to floor to make the final delivery. We’ve focused on that final 50 feet because our members tell us that is where about 60 percent of the delivery time is actually spent.

So, the idea behind forming this group is that each of its members or partners owns a piece of that or strongly influences it. The city owns the curb and in Seattle’s case, as in several other major cities, the network of alleys. The building property managers own the buildings.

The delivery companies own the equipment and the service itself. All of this is the basis for moving retail goods. The people in the group all own a piece of the process, but none of them can solve this kind of problem by themselves.

Q Who are the group’s members?

A The Urban Freight Lab is a structured work group made up of senior executives from a dozen companies. Those member companies include two major retailers, Kroger and Nordstrom, as well as the multinational food and beverage giant PepsiCo. We also have several key parcel delivery players: UPS, the U.S.

Postal Service, and USPack, which not only does parcel but also med-pharma as well as “big and heavy.” Plus we have Terreno Realty Corp., which buys, holds, and manages DCs in urban downtown centers; Boeing HorizonX, which has investments in future technology like drones; and Expeditors International, a large freight forwarder. We have three OEMs—Ford, GM, and Michelin—so you can see it is a really amazing group.

Senior executives come to Seattle four or five times a year
when we are making decisions about the research. What
sets this group apart is that with our partners—the city of
Seattle and now, the city of Bellevue (Wash.)—we actually
run empirical pilot tests on the street, in office towers, and
in residential towers for the most promising strategies and
solutions that we have developed.

Q What are some of the issues you’re tackling?

A There are two priority problems that the members and our partners, the local cities, have prioritized. The first is to reduce dwell time—the amount of time that delivery vehicles spend at the curb. Why does that matter? Well, obviously for the delivery company—UPS, for example— it’s great if you can get in and out of the space more quickly because you can get your work done faster. But there’s also a huge benefit from the cities’ point of view. They’re seeing demand for curb space skyrocket at a time when they’re actually reducing curb lanes because there are other things cities value, like transit lanes and bike lanes. What remains must be much more productive. So, the number-one priority is reducing truck dwell time.

The number-two priority is to reduce the absolute number of failed first-de-livery attempts. That is the sweet spot for delivery companies. They are losing money by having to come back a second or even third time to try to make a delivery. It is such a waste.

QAre you looking at ways to ensure there are places for vehicles to pull over to make their deliveries as opposed to double-parking and adding to street congestion?

AAbsolutely. That is exactly what we are doing right now. We started out by mapping every loading space for commercial vehicles, including private loading bays, in downtown Seattle. That has not been done in other cities. That is building block number one. Then, we studied occupancy: How are people actually using these spaces currently?

Next, we started testing promising strategies. In our group’s view, the most promising concept, the one with the biggest payoff, was the use of common lockers—lockers that can be used by any retailer. We position them as close as possible to a load zone so that UPS drivers can pull up, load the lockers, and go about their business.

What does that do? First, it sure as heck reduces the dwell time. We ran a pilot test in a 62-floor office tower in downtown Seattle, and it cut delivery time by 78 percent. So, instead of it taking the driver 20-some minutes to do their work, it became six minutes. Huge benefits.