Future of delivery is not drones
Urban transport is generally associated with moving people. An EPOMM report in 2012 stated 60 per cent of all trips in urban areas are goods traffic. With mass transport moving passengers efficiently, almost all goods move on roads inside the urban area. Mostly in trucks and large goods vehicles.
Newsweek reports that while truck traffic forms 7 per cent of the traffic in a city they cause a disproportionate 17 per cent of the congestion costs. It is well known that the form factor of the bicycle allows for more efficient usage of the road space. In Amsterdam for example, while 65 to 70% of the trips are made by bicycles, they use up only 11% of the road space. How well can the bicycle be repurposed for goods?
Cargo below 500kgs can clearly be moved to bicycles which are human and electric powered. The EPOMM report found that 42% of the goods trips can be moved to a bicycle which corresponds to a quarter of all trips made in the urban area. This can cause considerable improvement in the quality of life by reducing the negative externalities associated with motorised vehicles.
Transportation is 40 per cent of the costs in the logistics sector (Sanyal, IIMA, 2006). A Geekwire analysis showed that Amazon was losing USD 7.2 billion on shipping. With customer paying less for shipping, optimising costs become a major incentive towards profitability in the e-commerce era.
Category A (<1KG) and B (<5 kg) packages form a bulk of the e-commerce shipments which can be delivered via bicycles with lesser dwell time. In India, food deliveries alone are growing at 10 per cent every year with a low tolerance for traffic delays. UPS and DHL are already experimenting with cargo bikes worldwide. Food and parcel delivery is already being completed by bicycles in many parts of the world. In India, some bicycle sharing companies are launching e-bikes for delivery services. With passenger fare box not sufficient to run the bike share business, cargo becomes a useful side bet.
However, in order to make this mode of delivery effective and seamless, some changes to the logistics nodes are in order. Increasing the number of distribution points in the urban area from where the last mile parcel deliveries can take over is imperative. For example, in Bengaluru, setting up nodes at suburban rail stations and at spots where the radial roads intersect with ORR and PRR might slice the region more efficiently. This allows for piggybacking on Transit-oriented Development and make use of mass transport infrastructure for goods along with passengers. With the ToD region being friendly for walking & bicycling the deliveries benefit too.
Cargo bikes transport household goods and children too. So it’s going from being an exclusively commercial proposition to the equivalent of a pickup truck for personal use. This removes the bicycle from being an inferior good and puts a value on its utility. It also revives the vision of a pollution, congestion free, yet economically vibrant city.