The increase of deliveries has been phenomenal over the last decade. Although online shopping is still a fraction of all retail shopping worldwide, it has been increasing at a very rapid pace.
The impacts of this increase are numerous but one of the important ones in major cities is the increased traffic and congestion. There are more delivery vehicles on the streets and they stop regularly make deliveries. This is not so much of an impact in suburbs but in the downtown core it is creating a lot of problems.
A recent article from the New York Times gave a glimpse into the significant impacts of this increased traffic has had in New York City and the challenge the city faces to address the problem:
Increased deliveries in combination with ride sharing services has increase the volume of vehicles moving around (and frequently stopping). And the trend is not about to slow down. According to eMartketer, worldwide retail sales have been increasing at around 5% per year for the last 5 years. In comparison, ecommerce sales have been increasing by 20% annually and worldwide sales are expected to double over the next 4 years. (Source: eMartketer, June 2019)
So this is not going away.
We will explore other types of impacts in separate posts but we will also be looking at solutions that are being presented to adapt to this new reality.
Comments