New York City is Drowning in Packages

upstart writes:

Online orders, which ramped up with the start of the pandemic, are still clogging city streets:

Amazon, Hello Fresh, Stitch Fix. Click a button, and it's there in three to five days-perhaps even one. Packages, packages, and more packages-goods from all over the world, delivered after just a couple of clicks. But this height of consumer convenience has been complicating urban life for years, giving rise to increased theft and traffic, package waste, and a landscape of struggling local businesses. Some cities, especially in Europe and Japan, are implementing regulations that dramatically curtail package-related stress. But not New York City-not yet.

Three years ago, more than 1.8 million packages were delivered to the Big Apple on a typical day, according to data collected by the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Freight Systems. [...] Altogether, with groceries and prepared food, total daily deliveries stacked up to more than 3.7 million, the center estimates. That's nearly enough to deliver one item each to half the people in New York every day.

Noticing the increase in e-commerce delivery traffic, then-mayor Bill de Blasio allocated $38 million in the November 2021 budget to shipping these packages via the "blue highway"--by ferry instead of by truck. [...] Other attempts to reduce delivery-truck congestion have popped up. There are cargo bikes, for example, and a potential $3 surcharge on every "nonessential" package delivered. Lockers are also a key player; they help tackle the "last mile" problem-or the last leg of the delivery process-by centralizing drop-off locations to save the door-to-door toil. [...]

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