The Urban Freight Lab at the University of Washington coined the term "Final 50 Feet" and defined it as the supply chain segment that begins when a delivery vehicle pull into a parking space and stop moving—in public load/unload spaces at the curb or in an alley, or in a building’s loading dock or internal freight bay. It tracks the delivery process inside buildings, and ends where the customer takes receipt of their goods.
This Toolkit is designed to help transportation professionals and researchers gather key data needed to make the Final 50 Feet segment function as efficiently as possible, reducing both the time trucks park in load/unload spaces and the number of failed first delivery attempts. In addition, the toolkit can help transportation planners, traffic engineers, freight system managers, parking and operations strategists, and researchers build a fundamental knowledge base for planning; managing parking operations; managing emergency management and response; updating traffic, land use and building codes; and modeling future scenarios and needs. In short, the toolkit can be used to help cities meet the ever-increasing demand for truck and other load/unload activities.
All tools are open access and are permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy, and distribute.