It’s nice to see larger outlets talking about urbanism topics and Vox has made a few videos in this area recently.
- peanuts4life ( @peanuts4life@beehaw.org ) English36•1 year ago
Instinctually, I don’t like this idea. I’m all for eliminating cars and roads, but delivery drivers are already vulnerable and exploited enough. I can’t imagine delivering packages for Amazon in the searing heat here in Florida while every car tried to run you off the road.
- PerogiBoi ( @PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca ) English23•1 year ago
I was in Paris a couple weeks ago and literally everyone delivering things were on cargo e-bikes or e-trikes. Bikes and cars coexisted on roads but there was also a lot of dedicated bike and pedestrian roads too.
- chemicalprophet ( @chemicalprophet@lemm.ee ) English8•1 year ago
Yeah, Paris isn’t Florida, that’s fersher!
There’s a lot of places in the world that aren’t florida
- steal_your_face ( @steal_your_face@lemmy.ml ) English5•1 year ago
Yes would need better bike infrastructure before this is reasonable.
- johnthedoe ( @johnthedoe@lemmy.ml ) English4•1 year ago
I think cars should be prioritised for commercial use. It serves more people like a bus or train does to public transport. In fact a van with more parcels would eliminate more trips from individual homes to the post office by car. That said. Cars shouldn’t be the only option for delivery for sure. Depending on the city and delivery region.
- scv ( @scv@discuss.online ) 2•1 year ago
Exactly, this post completely misses the point. The human in a delivery van is not even desirable. It would be great to completely automate this job. Let people enjoy their lives more instead of peeing in a bottle.
- ntzm [he/him] ( @ntzm@lemmy.ml ) English34•1 year ago
Erm how am I meant to take my grandma to hospital and also drop off three fridges and my kids to school and then an entire building’s worth of bricks? Therefore cargo bikes will never work in any situation. I am very smart.
- SuiXi3D ( @SuiXi3D@kbin.social ) 17•1 year ago
Having been a driver for Amazon in the past for around a year and a half, I’ll tell you right now that these bikes wouldn’t work in a lot of places Amazon delivers. In dense urban areas? Sure, but certainly not out in the ‘burbs or rural areas.
Package counts on those routes can top out around 500. There’s no way Amazon would purposely reduce the amount of work they lay onto one driver.
Now that being said, if they loosened their iron grip over the drivers then I can absolutely see this happening in downtowns and some apartment complexes. Outside of really densely packed areas, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Some routes have drivers going well over 100 miles in a day. No way anyone’s gonna do that on a bike. And in the middle of summer in southern cities? Forget about it. Amazon doesn’t even give drivers enough time to find a bathroom, no way they’ll allow drivers to take breaks to cool off.
- CurtAdams ( @CurtAdams@urbanists.social ) 31•1 year ago
@SuiXi3D @mondoman712 From the OP: “It’s time to replace *URBAN* delivery vans.”
- SuiXi3D ( @SuiXi3D@kbin.social ) 3•1 year ago
Those urban routes are often the ones with the most packages. No way Amazon hires four people to do the job of one.
- SuiXi3D ( @SuiXi3D@kbin.social ) 2•1 year ago
I believe it. Doesn’t mean Amazon does.
- SuiXi3D ( @SuiXi3D@kbin.social ) 2•1 year ago
In the US?
- mrpants ( @mrpants@midwest.social ) English10•1 year ago
Wow dude when you lose the point just concede.
- ThenThreeMore ( @andthenthreemore@startrek.website ) English1•1 year ago
It’s the kind of thing that’s going to work in some areas and not others. It’ll be much more viable in most of Europe for instance as overall it’s much more urbanised than the USA.
- mrpants ( @mrpants@midwest.social ) English17•1 year ago
I haven’t read the article and am here to give my ignorant opinion. This wouldn’t work ever anywhere for any reason. Thank you.
I just posted this link on micromobility and almost 100% of the comments were like that!
- bionicjoey ( @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca ) 12•1 year ago
These vans are a hell of a lot better than semis, which IMO should not be allowed in cities. I’d be fine with more of these vans being around if it meant we could get rid of large 18 wheelers in urban areas.
- Freeman ( @Freeman@feddit.de ) 7•1 year ago
Why is noone mentioning that this video was sponsored by Delta Airlines?
I am not saying that the content isnt good but it is somehow strange to me that an Airline of all companies is sponsoring such a video
- valpackett ( @valpackett@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 3•1 year ago
Air travel is quite polluting, of course I would expect such companies to have a PR budget focused on that kind of thing…
- Moonrise2473 ( @Moonrise2473@feddit.it ) 6•1 year ago
In my city this wouldn’t work, the millisecond the delivery guy turns away his head, assholes would have stolen all the deliveries. It could be used only from point to point, not fully loaded with hundreds of small deliveries
An armored crate would increase the weight too much for human propulsion
- kim_harding ✅ ( @kim_harding@mastodon.scot ) 8•1 year ago
@Moonrise2473 @mondoman712 you can have locked boxes on cargo bikes… It ain’t rocket science
- lightnsfw ( @lightnsfw@reddthat.com ) 5•1 year ago
Why’s it taking so long for that couch I ordered to get here?
- 𝒍𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒏 ( @lemann@lemmy.one ) 8•1 year ago
A couch would probably need a box van to deliver it lol, I don’t think you can easily fit one into a standard panel van without getting a little creative
- Shurimal ( @Shurimal@kbin.social ) 7•1 year ago
Have you seen Renault Master, one of the most popular work vans in Europe? Shit’s huuuge inside😉 You can fit a 3-seat coach, 2 armchairs, coffee table and a floor lamp inside, along with a 100" TV.
- BirdyBoogleBop ( @BirdyBoogleBop@lemmy.dbzer0.com ) 2•1 year ago
Ive moved using a LWB van. Could have probably fitted 3 couches easily 6 if I stacked em.
A Post or car derived van can take one easily possibly 2
- michaelrose ( @michaelrose@lemmy.ml ) English4•1 year ago
Outside of dense urban core there just isn’t enough packages per mile to make this even slightly sane. Outside of temperate areas this would be awful when the weather is very cold or very hot. In all areas you would have to secure the packages against trivial theft and rain further adding to the weight and decreasing maximum cargo area.
Even in the fraction of places where this would be practicable differences in speed and cargo capacity means you would need more drivers to achieve the same results. It makes 100x more sense to to push ebikes as an alternative to commuters.
It says urban in the title. And cargo bikes can deliver packages faster than vans.
- Uranium3006 ( @Uranium3006@kbin.social ) 2•1 year ago
Yeah, we already see these in places like NYC. There’s definitally room to make improvment in select areas like that
- michaelrose ( @michaelrose@lemmy.ml ) English1•1 year ago
It looks like they believe they can replace 10% of Vans with bikes if they use Vans or trucks to move stuff to local pickup points and can thereby replace 10% of their vans with bikes in very dense urban core. This is interesting but underwhelming.
Where did you get 10% from, the article says
Recent estimates from Europe suggest that up to 51% of all freight journeys in cities could be replaced by cargo bike
- michaelrose ( @michaelrose@lemmy.ml ) English1•1 year ago
Are we redefining moving all freight to collection points near endpoints with all vans all the time and moving 51% the last 3 miles as handling 51% of freight with bikes? Even so call me when you’ve actually done it some places
I don’t work in logistics, so I won’t be doing this. You can read the paper quoted and that should answer your questions: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352146516000478