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

Abstract

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. Funding members include Costco, Nordstrom, UPS and USPS; the lab partners with the Seattle Department of Transportation. 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.