pacific nw transportation consortium region 10 Pactrans

In 2017, researchers from the University of Washington’s Supply Chain and Transportation Logistics (SCTL) Center, with PacTrans research funding, facilitated a pilot test with the hopes of reducing the number of failed first delivery attempts in urban buildings. To achieve this, a common carrier locker (much like Amazon’s delivery lockers) was deployed in the Seattle Municipal Tower in downtown Seattle. As part of this project, the SCTL documented the field-work procedures (including creating a technical app) when developing, testing, improving, and re-testing the GIS-mapping protocol used to locate and determine truck-relevant features of all the private loading bays and loading docks in Seattle’s Center City. They further designed and created the IT structure of the first edition of the Final 50 Feet: Urban Goods Delivery System Online Tool Kit. The tool kit enables transportation professionals at SDOT and in other cities to efficiently and effectively replicate these data collection processes and analyses in the future.

The research group then leveraged PacTrans Technology Transfer Success Story funding to add two new ‘how to’ tools to the Urban Goods Delivery System Online Tool Kit: : alleys: GIS mapping and truck feature documentation, and conducting alley truck occupancy studies. With this funding they also built two new modules within the tool kit: a curb occupancy module, and an alley survey module. The New York City Department of Transportation has requested access to the Tool Kit, and plans to implement it in NYC in 2018. Washington D.C. MDOT and Texas DOT have also expressed interest.