New Scientist - 07.09.2019

44 | New Scientist | 7 September 2019

Seasoned drivers know all this, but

thanks to the low wages, this is a job with

high turnover. Part of the solution could

be to make navigation systems smarter and

more precise, says Julian Allen, who studies

urban infrastructure at the University of

Westminster. There are several systems that

divide Earth’s surface into smaller chunks,

and these could be used to direct drivers to

delivery points more precisely than an address.

Rather than directing a driver to pull up at an

office block on a busy road with no parking,

they could explicitly direct them to the

nearest parking place, then plot a walking

route to the office.

Parking predicament

Bates and his colleagues have developed a

system that does this, calculating delivery

routes where driving and walking are

accounted for. When they tested it on a case

study of 144 package deliveries, they could

reduce the time a delivery route took by a fifth.

All this makes what may be an unreasonable

assumption, however: that the parking

spaces are actually available. “Parking is a

pretty big issue,” says Matthias Winkenbach,

director of the Megacity Logistics Lab at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“If you pick a random street in Manhattan

these days, you’ll probably see a UPS or FedEx

truck double-parked on the road in minutes.”

It’s something Wright is very familiar with.

“If I parked legally, my 4 hour shift would have

been 10 hours long,” he says.

A raft of start-ups is trying to alleviate

Popping to the shops

Online shopping may be growing

fast, but in most Western

countries there are still more

people who routinely go grocery

shopping in their cars. Would it

be a greener choice to have their

weekly shop delivered?

The short answer is: it

depends. In 88 per cent of US

households, someone jumps

in the car and drives to a store

to do their main grocery shop.

The country’s Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) totted

up all the kilometres of driving

that entails, assuming they shop

once a week, and calculated

that it would emit 17 million

tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Then it considered two scenarios

in which the groceries are

delivered instead.

In the first, a company uses

a fuel-efficient van and can

deliver the groceries when it

likes, giving it freedom to make

deliveries to addresses that are

close to one another at the same

time. This would emit about

half as much CO 2 as each

household driving separately

to a supermarket. In the second

scenario, the deliveries have

to be made at times of the

customers’ choosing with a

less-efficient van. The EPA

reckons this will produce more

CO 2 than individuals driving to

the shop. This means that unless

you are banding together with

neighbours to get your shopping

delivered in one go, it is probably

more efficient to drive to the

shops — or better yet, cycle.

You might think all that goes

out of the window if your

groceries are delivered by an

electric vehicle, but it’s not that

simple. In the UK, supermarket

chain Sainsbury’s recently began

trialling two electric vans for

deliveries in London. The trouble

is that the supermarket cannot

guarantee it uses electricity

generated from renewable

sources.

this problem – for both delivery drivers and

commuters – by using internet-connected

sensors to provide real-time information

on empty parking spaces. One example is

US start-up Fybr. Its technology involves

embedding a hockey-puck-sized sensor

into the tarmac.

The difficulties don’t stop there. Some cities

are making big moves to reduce pollution that

are forcing delivery companies to rethink

their methods. In April, London introduced an

ultra-low emission zone (ULEZ), within which

vehicles must meet strict environmental

standards or pay a toll. The city of Hamburg in

Germany has gone further. In May, it banned

commercial vehicles from its central streets.

Delivery firm UPS decided to move its depot

from outside Hamburg to much closer to the

centre. This was expensive, but it meant the

last-mile delivery could be handled by couriers

on electric or pedal bicycles with trailers. The

firm was forced into the move, but it actually

turned out to be cheaper, says Winkenbach. As

a result, similar schemes are now cropping up

across Europe and the US. In Paris, for instance,

delivery porters pick up parcels from Vert Chez

Vous’s depot on the River Seine, then deliver

them by bicycle and tricycle.

Banning vehicles from cities can raise the

hackles of the delivery firms. More generally,

experimenting with new delivery methods is

expensive for firms, which can mean they are

loathe to try – which in turn means nothing

changes. Wise’s hope is that by conducting

research on models of delivery, she can test

out industry-wide changes that would be

beneficial for the whole city, without any one

18%

of all retail sales in the UK

are made online

SOURCE: Office of National Statistics

9%

of all retail sales in Australia

happen online

SOURCE: Statistica

69%

of people in the US say they shop

online. Of those, 37 per cent say

they buy something on Amazon

at least once a month

SOURCE: NPR/Marist poll

81 billion

The number of kilometres

driven by vans in the UK in 2017

SOURCE: Department for Transport

1 in 4

Proportion of items bought online

in the UK that are returned for

refund or exchange

SOURCE: Government Office for Science