For example here in Brno, Czech Republic, the entry to the city center is nowadays quite restrictive for regular cars/vans - a lot of it is a pedestrian zone & its not really built for cars anyway, the street layout dating back to the middle ages in places or to the 19th century.
As a result, a lot of the deliveries happen via alternative means - for example when you order a pizza from the local Dominos, they will come with an electric scoter or on a bike. A lot of the food delivery happens via guys on small e-scooters (or even electric monowheels!) or just on foot/going by public transport. In other cases you can see a DHL cargo e-bike, etc. :)
I'd be curious if there is anything more iconic in recent history from brno that covers the ends of the earth than brno firearms.
[0] https://images.guns.com/prod/2021/06/21/60d0c845dabd0402af4f...
It will essentially become a whole new quarter, with housing, office/retail space and new schools. That's how big it was.
BTW, main focus now in Brno is high tech (a lot of electron microscopy), IT (Red Hat, Kiwi, YSOFT, Seznam, Netsuite, Avast, etc.) and lately also space (OHB, SAB Aerospace, etc.).
As far as I can tell their service is good & pizzas tasty. :)
Lately, I've started noticing 'UK' brand products coming to the US (Persil detergent, for example). Maybe many of these are Unilever brands being exported to more countries?
When people talking about "multinational corporations", this is what they mean. As a US person who's never traveled abroad, it might be jarring (or 'funny') at first to see familiar brands in a 'foreign' country. But we're ... a pretty global society now.
So you need to be going at the speed of 2km/h. Well, that's actually not that bad for a postal service. It's assuming absolute optimal conditions, but energy usage is for a typical electric car.
I doubt it would be financially net positive or carbon negative, but the idea is not as crazy as I thought assuming final delivery in medium density sunny urban areas.
At current prices, my sense is that solar panels on vehicles are marketing, not materially contributing to the energy budget. Nothing wrong with that but I wouldn't like to spend my feature money on the option.
If you space them off the roof by about an inch, like the old Landrover "Safari" roof, it'll make a hell of a difference.
True. For example, this Norwegian article from 2021 has two pictures in it.
https://fagbladet.no/nyheter/posten-stanser-kjop-av-fossile-...
The first picture at the top are mostly big electric cars. But scroll down a bit.
As shown in the second picture, the other electric cars that the Norwegian postal service use are much smaller. Almost like a quad bike with small wheels and a roof.
And large vehicles are dangerous too. But that's orthogonal.
The solution is better infrastructure for bikes. Separate bike lanes from cars and pedestrians, slow the cars down, and improve visibility at conflict points.
I don't think that's true, though. The alternative is not "endanger pedestrians", the alternative is "walk". A biker has a choice to not bike. And that's what I do; I walk when I'm in Boston, because I don't think urban biking is safe enough for me to make that choice.
Like, yes, better bike infrastructure is a good idea and separated bike lanes is something that I absolutely support, but biking is a choice, and right now a lot of people on e-bikes (not so much regular bikes, to be honest) make me feel unsafe to walk in places that they tend to congregate.
If we're all on board with punishing bicyclists (and, again, especially e-bikes), who get to act like vehicles when it suits them, from being on sidewalks and potentially endangering pedestrians, I think there's a great dialogue to have about that.
I don't much like cars, but cars aren't driving on the sidewalks where I am.
I imagine dedicated bike lanes would help with this, but at least where I am, there are dozens of cars for every bike, so I’m not sure how much sense it makes.
I don’t know that there’s all that much ‘hatred’, my road rides are by and large peaceful, but the cars that do seem upset by cyclists tend to be unwilling to respect bikes that are following the rules of the road; they don’t like bikes using a full lane and they will often break the rules of the road to pass a cyclist unreasonably quickly and unreasonably close.
One thing I’ve noticed about e-bikes is that they are increasing the number of cyclists considerably. I feel like this is very very good for cyclists, it’s making bikes much more present on the road, increasing the city’s interest in maintaining bike paths, normalizing bikes in traffic for powered vehicle drivers, etc.
120kg load capacity (270kg with trailer), 50kph max speed, 50-100km range. Curb weight is 315kg, total vehicle weight is 510kg.
For comparison, the USPS NGDV requirements were for a vehicle that could carry a loaded Kyburz DKP (minimum payload capacity of 680kg in 155 cubic ft) at twice the top speed (97kph) for longer operating ranges (110km minimum), all with an 18-29°C cabin temperature range at ambient temps of −34°-49C.
Calling BS on this. Anything more than a light drizzle (or any kind of wind + rain combo) and that driver is getting wet.
So you're agreeing with previous commenter that the description is incorrect?
It's more important to be able to get in and out easily.
You are quite right though, as soon as the rain starts, they're in full wet gear. Bright yellow, you can't miss them.
Suburban parcel delivery is specifically taken care of by Startrack, an Auspost subsidiary, usually in a trusty Toyota Hiace van.
https://kagi.com/proxy/Australia-Post-trials-three-wheeled.j...
I have a relative who did rider and driver training for learners. As well as the general public, they also ran Australia Post training courses which were large, regular, and took a lot of time.
- Most North American light rail systems use 750V electrification, Sound Transit used 1500V to reduce the number of substations.[1]
- The cars arbitrarily had to be assembled at Boeing in Everett "because of a 'Buy American' requirement written into the Kinkisharyo International contract ... Federal grant money is being used to help pay for the light-rail fleet, which means a percentage of the rail cars must be built in the U.S. and that final assembly must take place in Sound Transit's service district".[2]
Seattle's cars also used 70% low-floor access for ADA accessibility and included more bike racks, which isn't unique now but were both relatively novel at the time.[3]
1: https://web.archive.org/web/20150924022530/http://www.global...
2: https://web.archive.org/web/20070524112643/http://www.herald...
3: http://www.kinkisharyo.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/S...
Or is the idea to start with these where appropriate and develop other vehicles for more extreme climates?
Makes logistics cheaper if you only have one model to take care of, and since these are bespoke vehicles you'll also save on costs because the factory only has to build one variation.
https://www.postnl.nl/over-postnl/pers-nieuws/beeldmateriaal...
I'm in the city center of a large Belgian city and 99% of my deliveries from both BPost and PostNL are still the regular white panel vans, even though both have local sorting centers.
Perhaps the policy is different in Belgium?
But they also used bikes way back when they were still called PTT: https://www.transportfiets.net/2007/06/27/postfietsen-van-de... https://i.pinimg.com/474x/5c/00/9f/5c009f57703d05c367078d55e...
But on this search, I can even spot some Belgian mail deliverers on bicycles: https://www.google.com/search?q=postbode+op+fiets
And I've seen lots of discussions about whether it's wasteful to have things delivered to your door instead of buying it at a central shop, or that it's actually efficient to have a single van deliver all of that stuff instead of having everybody get in their own car to drive to the shop. I guess it depends on whether you need a car to go to the shop or not.
In any case, there's lots of experimentation with ever larger cargo bikes in order to try to keep city deliveries by bike. Still, we do get a lot of delivery vans in our street.
Packages are delivered by a PostNL guy driving a white van (or, more accurately, a subcontractor using their own rented non-PostNL branded van, but wearing a PostNL uniform)
Compared to the old step through moped they had this new trike is a big improvement. It has shade and it carries far more mail. But it is bigger and I can see it may sometimes be less "agile" on badly maintained pavement and grass. The mopeds used to scoot around like zippy little dogs
Or a roving Packagebot(TM) ?
Packages are done by courier in a van or truck. Grocery deliveries are done by supermarket branded refrigerator trucks. Local fast food is done by the ubereats/menulog crowd.
A local automotive store will drop off parts by an employee in his car.
It sounds like americans get more packages delivered in one go, by the us postal office trucks?
There's lots of challenges with mail delivery depending on the area, density, business/residential ratio, and many other things. Those vehicles satisfy some situation. "the challenge" is not a thing.
Only later that I discovered I was the dumb one.
IDK how you can possibly economically send mail to places like foreign barely habited deep pacific islands for the same price as mailing to your neighbor.
China does that, for example - which is why you can get a $3 widget on AliExpress sent from China with free shipping.
However, right now congress doesn't act like they're doing that intentionally. That doesn't seem to be the policy they're aiming for.
You should really look at the differences in delivery areas, parcel sizes, the location of the post box on a property. They are all different for different countries.
But you're absolutely correct. It looks like it can carry less than a simple cargo bike. :+1:
So if you already have a van, it didn't matter if it's half loaded or full. But if you're getting new vehicles, 1 bike doing 3 trips may be way cheaper over time than 1 van.
What I would love to see is a ban on advertising in the mail. It all just ends in the bin. Such a waste to see those poor postal people sorting trash flyers for each house. Has to be soul crushing for them. And all I do is skim it and chuck it and get annoyed I had to sift through to find real mail…
Some sort of “opt in” code… that companies who sent bills and places I signed up to could use. But that would block unsolicited communications…
They even sell you mailing lists for your target audience. Cringe.