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This! What an insane framing from the times. 15 odd years ago the city gradually began converting manhattan avenue parking to more and more commercial loading zones because of double parking, and it worked. But despite proof that it works and pressure from transit groups (e.g. TransAlt -- primarily bike advocacy -- pitches a loading zone on every side of every block), the city has never been willing to do this on streets or most other boroughs.

The ticket money and jobs might present a conflict of interest, or it might just be entitled car-owning lifers. But it's insane, because double parking is incredibly harmful to traffic flows, dangerous to truck drivers and cyclists, and unnecessary in a city whose residents who largely demand truck deliveries all day every day and don't need or want the free/cheap parking.

> Which, logistically, would be relatively trivial to implement -- just painted lines and signs. Street parking needs to be reprioritized for the needs of 2019, not 1950.

It's funny you picked that year, because the summer of 1950 is when over night on-street parking came into existence at all. Before that, all street parking was temporary. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/03/17/realestate/streetscapes-c...

Wasn't that exactly the point?

> Most misleading quote of the article: "“What percent of your deliveries are truly urgent — 5 percent or 2 percent?” said Mr. Holguín-Veras, the Rensselaer professor."

Good call out, 80% of the outrage machine have no basis in numbers and uses erroneous logic like this.

Is that really erroneous? It seems quite reasonable to me: is every truck 100% loaded or do they have many trucks traveling now with whatever needed to go out to hit the promised deadlines? Extra time gives them the ability to improve utilization of each truck, better route scheduling, and the possibility of off-hours deliveries avoiding peak congestion times.

From what I read and observe, trucks are already basically maximally loaded to what can be delivered in a shift -- they adjust the number of trucks and their routes to fit whatever the load of packages is. The software is really good at this.

In other words, they don't send out a truck out half-full when they could wait until tomorrow to send a full truck, which seems to be what you're suggesting. They just have a truck cover twice the area so it's full.

That means more vehicle-miles where it’s taking up space and likely drivers who are less familiar as well.

My point was just that aggressive deadlines preclude options: if you live on 3rd St and I live on 4th, one truck can deliver both of our packages with only minimal increased distance but that depends on enough people ordering within the same delivery window. Otherwise you get what I see a lot, which is the same company showing up at the same houses every day of the week even if most people could have waited to improve efficiency.

I suspect the long-term strategy might be to brand it as a pollution savings bonus, transforming a longer wait from something almost everyone sees as a negative into something which many people will feel good about.

I doubt the last mile efficiency is a big factor here. I suspect that the real optimization is in the longer parts of the route. If you're shipping something a thousand miles to get to a customer it makes sense to have a few more trucks driving around a city if it means you have less planes, long haul trucks, etc.

When I order something off Amazon and choose the longer shipping times I don't usually see it getting shipped from wherever it is to a warehouse near me and held for a couple days before delivery. Instead I usually see nothing being done until near the deadline when it ships from the warehouse. Occasionally I'll see it ship from the warehouse a few days early.

Aggressive deadlines do not preclude options once you reach sufficient scale.

There's a truck that will get to your street today. If you have a rush package on that truck, it goes along with all the other rush and non rush packages from N days ago.

> Which, logistically, would be relatively trivial to implement -- just painted lines and signs.

Plus consistent enforcement, preferably automated enforcement. Enforcement of existing bus and bike lanes is a bad joke.

They would also need to do away with the Commercial Abatement Program -- except that would drive up the cost of deliveries as well.

> it's hugely more efficient for a single truck+driver to deliver 100's of packages in a single day than for 100's of individual people to spend an hour each going to/from a store

Not sure if by "efficient" you also mean it's better for the environment, but I did hear from some researcher that deliveries are ecologically much worse than going to the store. The podcast/"lecture"[1] is in Flemish (and audio/video isn't very accessible), so I'll translate the main reasons:

- Many disparate products moved to many individual homes (many to many makes for a lot of 'movements', fragmentation)

- 15-20% of people is not home during a delivery attempt (useless impact)

- Returns are equally bad (people order 8 pairs of shoes knowing they'll send 7 back)

- Different delivery companies cause even more fragmentation (driving to the same home)

Of course, you might just have meant efficiency of trucks as opposed to 2-ton cars occupied by single persons (assuming most people in NYC would do their shopping by car -- as a European, I can't imagine doing that in large cities' centres, but I do hear the USA is very car-oriented so I don't know how it is in NYC).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRqKEK_xJvc

This already exists in NYC, it’s the space in front of fire hydrants. It doesn’t help.

The problem is that the trucks are simply offload points, and occupy large sections of street as 5-15 people process the packages, stack delivery carts, and proceed on their way. Then the deliveries are completed on foot. It’s a multi-hour process, blocks the sidewalk, and is pretty disruptive.

Edit: you can see this process in action in the pic at the top of the article.

Ok that's not a solution because it's not legal either and doesn't fit delivery trucks. Actual loading zones are very different.

It was a slightly tongue in cheek answer, just that as a practical matter for the use case of dropping off a passenger or a lone package, they work just fine, and are commonly used for that case.

I agree that actual loading zones are different, but I don’t think they would address the actual problem on the ground.

Absolutely. And sometimes it’s not just street parking - it’s free street parking.

Running to the store... which also got its inventory delivered by truck! So the urgency argument is even less apt.

But the number of trucks and stops they would need to make is much smaller if they're just going to stores instead of individual houses. And in NYC it's highly likely the person going to the store is taking public transit.

In NYC it's highly likely the person going to the store is walking. I've pretty much got everything I need within walking distance; there's only a very few specialized stores I'd go farther than that for (e.g. B&H).

Less urgent deliveries could presumably be batched together, resulting in fewer trucks on the road.

They could also be done during the night.

And Amazon is also promoting the concept of a "Delivery Day", presumably to encourage batching deliveries.

...how does that decrease the volume of shipments?

It doesn't decrease the volume of shipments, but most delivery trucks aren't 100% full. So they could make fewer trips if customers were willing to tolerate delivery delays.

Do you have numbers on that? In a city like NYC I find it hard to believe that there's many delivery trucks with a suboptimal load. With the scale they're dealing with there's no reason that most trucks can't be 100% full, except for poorly written software.

It means a lot, and no it doesn’t have much at all to do with parking.

Almost all parcel deliveries are considered urgent, if not they should be using the USPS.

Being anti-parking, but wanting to assign swaths for the exclusive use of trucks seems like a schizophrenic perspective to me.

There's already even a mechanism for what you want -- commercial-only zones (yellow curb).

One downside is they are typically all day long. A reasonable extension would be to expand them with more restrictive zones: deliveries only between 10-12 and 2-4 for most neighborhoods (there's no perfect time but a fixed window would help people plan). For neighborhoods with doormen: 4-6 AM, 7-10 pm (with a doorman, 4AM isn't a gift to package thieves). TCP cars in residential yellow curb: only 6-10 AM. etc.

This seems to be a good solution:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway

Just have several store with more storage space where people can go pickup their items. Delivering box to individual homes cannot be efficient.

There are already many truck only zones. They typically are in effect during business hours. Swift deliveries can also be done in the 30 ft zones around fire hydrants. The drivers already ignore them and double park wherever they want, causing mayhem when there is no way to get by on narrower streets.

Sure, trucks delivering packages are more efficient than people getting stuff from stores, but the former hasn't replaced the latter. People are still doing both.

You're not wrong there is some induced demand here too. Still, the best response is their suggestion, areas meant for item drop off.

honestly, I think the article was secretly trying to drum up hate for big tech like Amazon.

I thought we were supposed to be designing cities for people and not vehicles. Isn't the answer for everyone to bike with their bike trailer to a central warehouse and collect their own packages?

I’m a heavy bike supporter, but this suggestion seems to make the lives of bikers and other people better, too.

Delivery people could ride their (electric) bikes that last oh, one mile from a central warehouse, to the drop off point.

No, service vehicles are integral to well-functioning cities. We need to increase efficient transportation so most people avoid cars with a single driver.

Delivery reduces traffic by having 1 truck drop off 100 packages instead of 100 people picking up 1 package.

carving out specific areas for specific vehicular uses is designing for people. people still need vehicles sometimes, especially communal, efficient vehicles like the ones that do parcel delivery. Everybody doing everything themselves is not a good solution, no matter what mode of transportation they use.

I am all for bikes, but this is super silly. How is it an improvement for a hundred people waste their time and clog up the streets to do the job of a single truck?

No, there should not be street side parking on most streets as this becomes a huge hazard for cyclists with uni students randomly swerving in and out to deliver a pizza or people carelessly swinging doors open to get out of a taxi without looking.

Inside a city, for most kinds of deliveries, it would be more efficient to have people deliver by e-bikes. A bike with a trailer or large bag is an incredibly efficient way to deliver most kinds of items since you can simply pull up to the front door of the place you want to deliver to and unload the items. Sure you still have the issue with very large items but most people aren't ordering a new bed very often at all.

Bicyclists are pretty reckless in their driving. It’s extremely rare to see one actually stop at a traffic signal and not just blow through when they have momentum.

As for package size ... I’m not sure there’s much of anything delivered to my building on a daily basis that could be transported up hill by bike.

I suggested ebikes and trailers which makes it fairly easy to move anything of up to about 40kg and smaller than a tv box. I have ridden a bike pulling a trailer of 20kg up to the top of a mountain and it was quite do able but with an ebike it would be trivial. Most packages that people order are very small items that could fit in one hand and suit this method very well.

You might be onto something here. The last delivery I received was a chair; it came unassembled but was still fairly bulky. I'd pay a small premium to watch somebody try to carry it on a bicycle because that sounds hilarious.

More seriously, most small items are shipped in packaging that's much too large. Solve that problem and non-truck delivery becomes a lot more feasible. Still not feasible for some packages though.

A chair is something you would likely still deliver by truck but most of the items I have received and seen others receive come in a small box or a bubble wrap plastic sleeve. Or they are food items. These are all ideal for delivering by bike and in my city they mostly are.

More efficient by which metric? It's going to take 30+ ebike trips to cover a full delivery truck with a lot of deadhead trips to pick up more packages. How much are you paying them? Same rates as the drivers? Good luck!

Your solution is effectively corporate welfare. The free market should determine whether customers will order packages or not.

Also, you are suggesting that the government should provide an easier means for businesses to serve their customers in a way that gives them an advantage over the local businesses that pay local taxes on purchases.

The real solution is to make delivery companies pay for the congestion they cause. A fair use tax, for example. Then, using that tax revenue, you can improve traffic. The delivery companies can pass their costs on to the retailers and the retailers can pass the costs on to the customers. The customers can then decide whether they wish to pay more or shop somewhere else.

> Your solution is effectively corporate welfare.

The current state of affairs is corporate welfare too. With an added side helping of externalities imposed on other traffic.

I think you're touching on the fact that all road surfaces in NYC are a massive net wealth transfer to those who drive on them or (especially) park on them.

I agree. Either charge the full economic rate for use of the road, or turn it over to public transport, or some mix of these.

We should be phasing out roads for non-delivery traffic in urban areas anyways.

So no buses in urban areas?

Buses are just trucks that specialize in delivering people.

It's not really corporate welfare, because delivery companies are in competition and the cost savings get passed on to the consumer. It's a subsidy.

People keep repeating "savings get passed to the consumer" truism, but what is your evidence? DHL posts healthy profits, so I allege we are just padding their bottom line.

If that were false, DHL would raise prices and get even more profits.

Or create the aforementioned delivery / pickup parking and charge a fee for their use.

Gives citizens what they want, puts cost on the delivery services for their externalities, and doesn't engage in protectionism for local businesses.

> The free market should determine whether customers will order packages or not.

Right. Use of the street should be auctioned rather than given away for free. My guess is delivery companies can and would outbid people that just want to store empty vehicles, which is what we are subsidizing now.

100% this. The article is alarmist, but there are no simple solutions here. Why should NYC devote public space to guarantee access for a business model that primarily extracts wealth from the city? Maybe Amazon should lease parking spaces to stage its deliveries, at appropriate rates. It could even install equipment (e.g. mobile pallette depos) that made the delivery process more efficient.

> extracts wealth from the city

Not "provides value"?

All the GP said is that there should be parking spaces for deliveries, not that they should be free.

> Your solution is effectively corporate welfare. The free market should determine whether customers will order packages or not.

A government fair use or congestion tax on delivery vehicles, which you are proposing, isn't a free market solution.

>The real solution is to make delivery companies pay for the congestion they cause. A fair use tax, for example. Then, using that tax revenue, you can improve traffic.

Congestion charges are only going to be effective if all road users have to pay it. If you want to charge delivery trucks but not personal vehicles, you're only going to make the congestion problem worse.