Scholar
Chiwei Yan
Visit scholar websiteNews | November 21, 2019
Could drone deliveries help the environment? Let’s unpack that
In the era of e-commerce, it takes a single click to order anything you’d like. But it takes a lot of energy to bring it to your door. Items are shipped from factories, shuttled between warehouses and finally trucked to your home. This convenience comes at an environmental cost — transportation accounts for 29% of U.S….
News | December 17, 2019
Delivering the goods: Drones and robots are making their way to your door
The reality today is that delivery is a bigger business than ever. With online shopping, it’s estimated the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx and UPS will process, sort and deliver more than two billion packages between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve. Amazon’s own fleet of delivery trucks is expected to handle 275 million holiday season shipments. And Amazon…
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Dorothy Reed
Visit scholar websiteNews | October 22, 2019
How the Urban Freight Lab seeks to fix the last 50 feet of shipping
The very last step of shipping packages in a city — not the end mile but the “final 50 feet” — bedevils delivery drivers. Every day, they face the task of driving and parking safely and legally in urban environments not built for the brick-and-asphalt end journeys of e-commerce. For these workers every hour is rush hour,…
News | June 13, 2019
Livable City Year celebrates partnership with City of Bellevue
This year’s Livable City Year partnership with the City of Bellevue mobilized 285 students from a variety of schools and colleges, representing all three UW campuses, to work on 30 projects in the city. The students’ research, findings and recommendations were on display at a celebration at Bellevue City Hall on Monday, June 3. The Bellevue City…
News | February 28, 2018
Reducing failed deliveries, truck parking time could improve downtown Seattle congestion
In Amazon’s hometown, people turn to their computers to order everything from groceries to last-minute birthday presents to the odd toothbrush or medication forgotten from the store. If online shopping continues to grow at its current rate, there may be twice as many trucks delivering packages in Seattle’s city center within five years, a new…
News | May 14, 2020
The cost of fast and free shipping
Would deliveries dropped off to everyone pollute less than all of us driving to stores? Yes, in principle, but probably not in practice. Anne Goodchild, founding director of the Supply Chain Transportation and Logistics Center at the University of Washington, has found that consolidating deliveries in one area produces fewer climate-harming emissions than the same people driving back…
News | October 6, 2020
UW researchers driving around Seattle to track COVID-19 response over time
As the city of Seattle shut down in March 2020 to try to slow the spread of COVID-19, a group of University of Washington researchers got to work. The team developed a project that scans the streets every few weeks to document what’s happening around the city — answering questions such as: Are people outside?…
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