It doesn’t matter if you drive, bike, or walk to get around NYC, you know the scene well – a double-parked delivery truck unloading a mountain of packages onto the curb while blocking a street, sidewalk, bike lane, or bus stop. The pandemic-induced explosion in online shopping has led to 2.4 million packages transported and delivered to residents and businesses throughout the five boroughs every day, with Manhattan receiving by far the highest concentration of these deliveries per square mile.
The unregulated last-mile delivery system currently being used by delivery services exacerbates congestion, road safety issues, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, package waste, and various other quality-of-life concerns in Manhattan and throughout the city. And it’s only getting worse. Online shopping is not going away, so we must be forward-thinking and take action now to counter the negative environmental, health, safety, economic, and quality-of-life issues currently associated with e-commerce delivery.
Produced by my office, A Blueprint for Tackling the E-Commerce Delivery Challenge offers a series of common-sense, actionable recommendations – that can be implemented immediately and over the coming years – to truly make e-commerce delivery greener, safer, and more efficient. These recommendations include expanding the use of e-cargo bikes as a substitute for trucks, creating curbside loading zones in every neighborhood, beefing up enforcement of illegal parking violations in loading zones, and exploring utilizing our waterfront for cargo delivery and staging.
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