URBAY

Part of

Public Sector

A solution to more sustainable inner city delivery

MA 2024

Keywords

Logistics, Parking, Public Sector, Street Sustainability

Overview

Last-mile delivery significantly impacts cities by contributing to noise, pollution, and congestion. The rising trend in e-commerce will further increase the demand for logistics, necessitating a response from urban areas.

From the perspective of councils, we designed a parking bay booking platform to better assist delivery drivers in parking, reduce their impact on the road, improve delivery efficiency and, in consequence, enhance urban road sustainability.

Collaboration

Thanks to Mr.Chris and Yohannes from Parking Policy and Traffic Management Orders at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chealsea, we gained a more realistic understanding of the council's capabilities and challenges and learned how they work in the real world, allowing us to base our solution on a more realistic context.

Thanks also to Mr. David and John, from Central London Freight Quality Partnership and Brewery Logistic Group, for providing us with invaluable first-hand information about the urban logistics industry, allowing us to refine the details of our services from a service user's perspective.

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Context and research

Through our research, we found that last-mile delivery significantly impacts urban sustainability. The growing trend in e-commerce is expected to amplify this effect, as delivery services expand across all areas, leading to increased traffic volume and severe congestion problems for both cities and delivery companies.

This situation necessitates a response from urban areas. In line with government strategies, our focus is on reducing delivery-related traffic impacts to improve urban road conditions and promote sustainability.

How might we

From the perspective of public sectors and local authorities, optimise and regularise delivery parking process in dense areas, in order to reduce the impact of inner-city delivery parking on urban road systems.

Strategy

Set up designated parking bays in a densely congestion areas, allowing delivery drivers from all delivery companies to book parking spots in advance through the combination of an online reservation system and flexible drive-in mode to use the parking bays orderly.

Traffic Volume & Timetable

How do we design the fixed and flexible modes?

Based on traffic volume research, there are different peak and off peak time, for weekdays and weekends.

For peak time we use fixed mode as it needs more regulation, and for off peak time, we use flexible mode to enable more driver to use it efficiently.

By the end of the day, the parking bays can be used as a regular parking bays for residents with permits.

Prototype

In order to refine our proposed solution, we conducted 3 stages of prototypes with the key stakeholders within the urban logistic service and parking system.

Local Council

Through the meeting with the team from Parking Policy and Traffic Management Orders at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chealsea, we had an overall validation on our proposal. This session provided us with an understanding of the challenges and capabilities of the council as a public sector in the city and allowed us to better measure the changes we can make from the council's perspective.

Neighbourhoods and Local stores

By interviewing staff at local shops, we were able to understand the logistics and parking-related volumes, opportunities and challenges faced by various kinds of shops. The logistics volumes and models for large shops, small chains and small independents are completely different, so after this session we finally identified the stakeholder we need to cover in the service.

City Operator and Logistic Service Provider

The meeting with Logistic service operator and chairman of Brewery Logistics Group allowed us to learn in more detail about the challenges and opportunities faced on urban roads, and even some of the habits and details of people parking informally. This first-hand information allows us to better adapt our solutions to more realistic urban scenarios and business partnerships.