Occasional Portland Transport contributor Garlynn Woodsong is the presenter at the next PSU Transportation Seminar:
Occasional Portland Transport contributor Garlynn Woodsong is the presenter at the next PSU Transportation Seminar:
The Portland region is begin recognized by the EPA as one of five communities highlighted for “Smart Growth Achievement”. The award specifically calls out the 2040 growth concept.
This diagram was developed out of a stakeholder interview for the sustainable freight task force I just served on. It’s illustrative that even if you get the last mile to be very sustainable, there’s a lot of complexity in moving even a very simple commodity.
I’m serving on a small working group that is trying to develop some high-level ideas for how the City of Portland could encourage more sustainable freight.
It’s a little bit of a mind-bender, because all of my urban design sensibilities push for smaller vehicles.
But in fact from a fuel efficiency perspective, there is a very strong inducement toward larger trucks and keeping them full. Fuel per pound of cargo goes down as trucks get bigger (regardless of what vehicle technology improvements you make like electric or biodiesel).
The other half of the question is reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Obviously from this point of view it’s better to send out a full truck and let it deliver until it’s empty.
The problem is, many customers want their deliveries at the same time (7-10am is typical). This can result in running many partially empty trucks at the same time, because you can only fill the truck with what it can deliver during that window.
Some of the keys to making this more efficient would include:
It’s a very interesting set of tradeoffs.
Sightline reports that per-capita gasoline usage in the Northwest is seeing an uptick after nearly a decade of decline.
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