Requirements and Specifications for Off-Hours Delivery

摘要

The research examines the feasibility of off-hours delivery - delivery of goods and services between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. - as a technique for reducing the adverse impact of delivery vehicles on urban traffic. The state-of-the-art of off-hours delivery and its financial and institutional constraints are presented. The information analyzed in this report was obtained through personal interviews with elected officials, planning officials, traffic engineers, union representatives, and a broad cross-section of businesses which serve the central business districts of Washington, D.C.; Denver, Colorado; Atlanta, Georgia; and San Francisco, California. Many businesses already use off-hours pickups and deliveries and are quite content with such operations. Enough carriers provide off-hours service that there is little difficulty in obtaining such pickups and deliveries. Should there be a gradual shift toward more off-hours operations, the carriers would probably continue to maintain adequate service. Most of the interviewees recognized the advantages of efficiency and avoidance of congestion that are inherent with off-hours operation but felt that they are offset by increased labor and management costs. The interviewees could foresee no certain economic advantages to be gained with off-hours pickups and deliveries; the societal advantages associates with reduced congestion were viewed as remote.