It's nice to see larger outlets talking about urbanism topics and Vox has made a few videos in this area recently.

  • michaelrose@lemmy.ml
    ·
    9 months 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.

      • michaelrose@lemmy.ml
        ·
        9 months 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.

        • mondoman712@lemmy.ml
          hexagon
          ·
          9 months ago

          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@lemmy.ml
            ·
            9 months 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

            • mondoman712@lemmy.ml
              hexagon
              ·
              9 months ago

              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