CrankyOne

UPS Begins Delivering Packages via E-Trike in Portland | Streetsblog.net

This is good news for Portland and for the future in many US cities. As the article says these are common in Europe so it's good to see them coming to the US.

An interesting bit is the cost savings from avoiding parking tickets. Perhaps a bit of encouragement to report those who violate bike lanes and maybe change their behavior more than just staying out of the bikeways.

fietsbob

Ah serving the the Hipsters that drove the property Prices and Rents Up.

B. Carfree

The parking tickets that UPS receives are pretty tiny compared to overall revenue. I doubt if they played any role whatsoever here. Likely UPS realized that it was simply faster to make the deliveries with electric trikes that also are able to pull right up onto the sidewalk for faster transitions at the point of delivery.

I've also seen UPS use human-powered bikes with trailers in simple suburban settings. They send a couple of seasonal employees out and restock them as needed from a "normal" delivery van. I'm sure it's a lot cheaper to furnish these non-union low-wage temporary employees with bikes and trailers than it would have been to give them motor vehicles.

Darth Lefty 

Why wouldn't they give tickets to the e-bikes for riding on the sidewalk?

canklecat

It would make more sense to use delivery vehicles similar to the electric scooters and wheelchairs already commonly used by disabled folks. Those are already generally accessible to sidewalks, existing ramps and elevators. These could be hauled in vans filled with parcels for delivery, parked within reach of urban delivery zones.

There may be some complaints from disabled folks who might regard this as competition. But the business usage of the same infrastructure might actually promote more and better accessibility for disabled folks. While businesses might regard ADA compliance as an expense rather than an investment, they'd probably take a more positive attitude toward the same infrastructure to accommodate deliveries.

The oversized delivery vehicle shown in that article looks suitable only for a very limited area.

B. Carfree

Because they're only riding on the sidewalk for a very short distance in order to park. It's kind of like why motorists don't have to get out and push their cars across the sidewalk in order to access parking lots.

Also, Oregon doesn't do traffic law enforcement with one exception. In Portland, there's a subdivision that cops like to do occasional stop sign enforcements targeting people on bikes. Other than that, anything goes. That could be part of the reason we will have 50% more roadway deaths in 2016 than we had in 2013.

Stadjer

Where I live there are bike delivery services, Domino's pizza for example, but also DHL cargo bikes and a lot of couriers who do business to business paperwork delivery. But that has little to do with parking tickets because delivery vans are allowed to park almost anywhere as long as they have the lights blinking and it's only for a few minutes. It's because it's faster in the inner city. But time is money and parking tickets are money, so money is always the incentive and it does not really matter where it comes from.

CrankyOne

Saving a million starts with one. There are rarely any opportunities to reduce costs in large chunks without also severely impacting revenue. Remaining financially viable means a lot of tiny savings in a million places. A dollar here and a dollar there.

In 2013 UPS was paying NYC over $4 million per year in parking tickets and Fedex nearly double that. https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article...doing-business

A million here and a million there and pretty soon we're talking real money.

unterhausen

UPS started out delivering by bike

Dan Burkhart 

As cities become increasingly choked with traffic, pedal power delivery vehicles make more and more sense.
I have a friend in Washington DC who works as a bike/freight courier in the city core, and hauls some pretty impressive loads around town.
As for UPS, they will use whatever mode works best in a particular locale. here's how they do it in Venice. Been there and seen it.

HardyWeinberg

delivery e-bikes in Paris

I-Like-To-Bike

Mail/delivery service out West back in the day was by horse; so what?

noglider 

I believe NYC never stopped delivering stuff by bike. I've been seeing lots of delivery bikes here since I was a baby.

Citi Bike, the bike share program, uses a combination of trucks and bikes to move their bikes from full stations to empty stations, depending on where demand is. The bikes pull trailers with four bikes on them. They need these delivery bikes, because they cut through traffic better than trucks do.

CrankyOne

Not too surprising, almost all mail delivery in The Netherlands is by bicycle. Which calls for one of my favorite videos:

bikemig 

I thought that was an interesting piece of social history about UPS:

UPS Was Founded By Two Teenagers With One Bicycle and $100 Borrowed from a Friend

That's the so what.

I-Like-To-Bike

You might also find interesting the early history of transportation pioneers/manufacturers Henry Ford and the Wright Brothers and how they started in the bicycle business, maybe even find some relevance to modern day use of bicycles for delivery of mail and packages.

CrankyOne

I find a lot of these stories fascinating and encouraging. Even today someone could start out doing deliveries themselves on a bike and eventually build a fairly large business. Some can be pretty funny too. There was an interview with a couple of Elon Musk's school teachers who said that he often said that one day he was going to build a rocket and fly to Mars. They said they just use to smile and play along. One said that Musk apparently didn't realize that they were just playing along.

Rollfast

According to somebody who lives there Portland got socked in pretty good by a snowstorm the other day, so I really doubt bike deliveries are working well right now. It's also the heaviest time for deliveries all year, Christmastime.


I don't know if anyone near Portland or Seattle, Spokane recall a few short years ago when city buses were skating on the streets and everybody's cars were body checking each other like it was Slap Shot II.

CrankyOne

Bikes/Trikes can often get in to areas that trucks cannot. UPS may be making deliveries while Fedex is waiting for roads to be cleared.

Leisesturm

You know... bikes are great... I have nine of them... that said... the Bullit cargo bike above... if the UPS scrapped its entire fleet and converted over to bikes and trikes, you guys would be the first to complain, because there is a LOT of stuff that won't fit on a Bullit! Why does every concept need to be taken to the reductio ad absurdum? Yes UPS and FedEx trucks block bike lanes. So... get rid of them? Really? Let's not do that. OK. Let's deal with it and not try to imagine, even for one second that an e-trike can do what a 45' UPS truck can. Lincoln Navigators and Chevy Silverado's I'm not sure we really need. Hummers I am certain we do not need. Why don't you guys complain about them? Because they aren't usually blocking bike lanes. But they are doing way more to kill you before your time than any number of UPS trucks.

CrankyOne

I don't think anyone was suggesting that bikes and trikes can totally replace trucks. You're jumping to conclusions.

As @Stadjer and @noglider pointed out, both Groningen and NYC have a good chunk of deliveries made by bicycle. Having spent considerable time in both cities I can safely say that far more is delivered by bicycle in Groningen than NYC but NYC (and Portland, and others) may catch up. The more that can and is delivered by bikes, trikes, and even small BEV's, the fewer larger trucks there are on the streets.

In many Dutch cities it's actually quite unusual to see any trucks as the vast majority of stuff can and is delivered by bike and many streets only allow motor vehicles or trucks between perhaps 1a and 6a. Trucks get used for items too big or heavy for trikes and trikes used for the rest. It's a system to overall works quite well and reduces; fatalities and injuries from trucks, costs of wear & tear on streets, noise and air pollution, and congestion.

As to dangers, trucks are quite dangerous. A study in London found that a truck is nearly five times as likely to kill or injure someone walking or riding a bicycle as a passenger car. This is due to poor cab design that creates significant blind spots for drivers and to people falling under the carriage. Correcting these deficiencies and reducing the number of trucks is a high priority.

Trucks blocking bikeways is also a significant danger as it causes bicycle riders to have to veer out in to dangerous traffic. Seeing trucks or other vehicles blocking bikeways also discourages people from riding.

CrankyOne

Larger trucks will largely disappear from cities in the not too distant future anyway. Autonomous electric delivery vehicles are close to viable. Most of these are about the size of a Mini Cooper and are, fleet wide, much less expensive to operate than a larger petrol truck with driver so UPS and others are putting significant resources in to them. Rather than 40 UPS trucks pulling out of the local distribution center you may see 400 of these.

HardyWeinberg

who unloads the autonomous minicoopers?

HardyWeinberg

Portland actually practices at this!

https://disasterrelieftrials.com/

CrankyOne

Depends.

1) Employees at the destination. They receive a text noting when it will arrive and a code to unlock their compartment to get their stuff out. They'll likely be given a time limit to do this before it moves on to its next destination if it has one.

2) Robotic. Delivery vehicle pulls in to a bay and either ejects load or a robot removes the load.

McDonalds has a 100% robotic vending store up and running. Food and supplies are delivered by an autonomous vehicle, unloaded, stored, cooked, packaged, and delivered to customer without any human involvement. Musk has a company where the robots are 100% built and installed by other robots — the machine building the machine.