1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
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Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#2In Paris, freight trucks enter the city at night and deliver packages to smaller warehouses near homes. In the morning, bikes and electric vans haul them to people’s doorsteps. Some neighborhood convenience stores and flower shops double as pickup spots for packages.
European model seems like a good one to copy here.
Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#3In Paris, freight trucks enter the city at night and deliver packages to smaller warehouses near homes. In the morning, bikes and electric vans haul them to people’s doorsteps. Some neighborhood convenience stores and flower shops double as pickup spots for packages. European model seems like a good one to copy here.
It will be the e d of same day delivery and that’s just fine with me.
Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#4In Paris, freight trucks enter the city at night and deliver packages to smaller warehouses near homes. In the morning, bikes and electric vans haul them to people’s doorsteps. Some neighborhood convenience stores and flower shops double as pickup spots for packages. European model seems like a good one to copy here.
On paper, it's a perfect system.
In reality, failing businesses who want the extra income sign up to be package pickup spots, and then provide deplorable service.
Some don't respect the opening hours that were published. Some literally climb over mountains of packages. Some have no organisation. Delivery companies realised that they no longer have to attempt deliveries so automatically dump their packages in the pickup points. Most pickup points end up loathing people who comes to pick up packages: the customer hates the lack of service and resent that their package wasn't delivered, the shop resents that they have even less time for their failing business, and take this out on the package customers.
The worst part is, 90% of the time you can't control if a package goes there.
Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#5A few thoughts as a bike commuter in Manhattan who sees this first hand every day:
The congestion tax can't come soon enough (and it should have no carve-outs, certainly not for people who live here).
We need to get rid of lots of free on-street parking in the city and replace it with loading zones so that taxis/Ubers and trucks have free spaces on every block to conduct their business without blocking travel lanes or bike lanes.
The constant blocking of bike lanes by trucks and cars is super dangerous, kills multiple people per year, and when the police do enforce these infractions at all, all they can do is write up some measly tickets that the truck drivers write off as the cost of doing business since they've already accumulated hundreds of them. No joke: Here's a truck I reported in the bike lane that's closing in on a thousand tickets: https://twitter.com/Reported_NYC/status/1187381912253411328
There are two solutions to this problem, both of which should be undertaken: Bike lanes should be actually physically protected, so that vehicles cannot enter the bike lane at all. They did this on the Hudson River bikepath after a terrorist drove along it and killed six cyclists a few years ago, and they need to do it in the rest of the city too. All it takes is some jersey barriers, bollards, and/or new curbs put in.
And the second solution is make the penalties on trucks meaningful. Have the fine amounts escalate with every violation within a certain period, with no cap (so that a ticket could eventually cost tens of thousands of dollars for a particular scofflaw truck, rather than the current ignorable amount of around a hundred). And tow/confiscate trucks that have enough tickets.
And one more thing: A lot of trucks are manifestly unsafe to be in such dense cities. >=53' semi-trailers, for example, are completely banned, yet you see them routinely in the city (and cops don't ticket them). They barely have enough space to turn through a typical intersection, and the they have very high beds and wide-open wheels that can easily pull in and crush to death a pedestrian or cyclist. We should ban all unsafe trucks in the city and enforce it. The only trucks allowed should be ones with sidewalls that go nearly to the ground, to prevent anyone from being run over. These trucks already exist and are widely used in Europe where they are required; here's an example: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-coca-cola-delivery-truck-b...
Note that, despite trucks being a minority of vehicles on the road, they account for way more than their fair share of pedestrian and cyclist deaths, because traffic speeds here are generally pretty slow and if you get hit by a car you're likely to be thrown up and over and survive. But you can be killed by one of these trucks going at just 1 mph simply by being crushed to death. This is not theoretical; it happened earlier this year when a cyclist traveling in a bike lane was doored and was thrown underneath an adjacent truck stuck in traffic, which when it started moving crushed him to death. The large open spaces between the ground and the truck deck allowing you to get run over by the wheels is highly dangerous.
Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#6A few thoughts as a bike commuter in Manhattan who sees this first hand every day: The congestion tax can't come soon enough (and it should have no carve-outs, certainly not for people who live here). We need to get rid of lots of free on-street parking in the city and replace it with loading zones so that taxis/Ubers and trucks have free spaces on every block to conduct their business without blocking travel lanes o…
100% agreed. This is a trivially solvable problem, and the only thing standing in the way is the fact that politicians are terrified to upset the small minority of people who currently benefit from free on-street parking. We're currently giving away huge amounts of the most valuable real estate in the country, and we need to reclaim it for publicly beneficial uses including bus lanes, bike lanes, and designated loading/unloading zones.
Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#7Wait till the things start buzzing around via drones by the thousands...
Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#8In Paris, freight trucks enter the city at night and deliver packages to smaller warehouses near homes. In the morning, bikes and electric vans haul them to people’s doorsteps. Some neighborhood convenience stores and flower shops double as pickup spots for packages. European model seems like a good one to copy here.
On paper, it's a perfect system. In reality, failing businesses who want the extra income sign up to be package pickup spots, and then provide deplorable service. Some don't respect the opening hours that were published. Some literally climb over mountains of packages. Some have no organisation. Delivery companies realised that they no longer have to attempt deliveries so automatically dump their packages in the pick…
Perhaps, but that sound like a much more manageable problem to solve than what the article describes happening in NYC.
Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#9> “What percent of your deliveries are truly urgent — 5 percent or 2 percent?” said Mr. Holguín-Veras, the Rensselaer professor. “We as customers are driving the process and to some extent creating these complications.”
As a NYC resident, it's not really a matter of urgency. Identical products are generally much cheaper online (and generally with free shipping). And it's much more convenient since the products get shipped straight to my apartment which removes the need for me to navigate poorly stocked/organized stores and then carry it back to my apartment by walking, taking the subway, or the bus.
A lot of the time, it's actually difficult to find certain goods in stores here (or to know which store to go to). Recently I've purchased: calipers, a high torque servo motor, and playing cards online. I honestly don't know where I could find calipers and motors in stores here. I've tried buying playing cards in stores, but I could not find a reasonably sized package in stores that are also in stock. I've found 6 packs of playing cards in stores, but the regular 1 or 2-packs are always out of stock. I seriously tried for two months to buy the cards in store before giving up and buying it on Amazon.
Re: 1.5M Packages a Day Bring Chaos to NYC Streets
#10So basically the Russians can order staples to a few hundred carefully chosen locations and brings Cities to a standstill. No ICBMs necessary. Good to know.