Freight Loading Space Provision: Evidence from the US
Publication: Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 147, Issue 2
Abstract
Limited freight loading space provision in city centers increases illegal loading behaviors such as double parking or parking in bicycle lanes or sidewalks. Such traffic violations have caused concerns among urban planners, engineers, and the public about localized congestion and safety impacts on delivery workers and other road users. Despite the importance of these issues, research on the planning processes that determine freight loading provision is very limited. Our study addresses this gap by reviewing the zoning code requirements for loading zones in the 20 largest US and the four largest North Carolina cities and interviewing professionals about loading zone policies and practices. We discovered significant variations in offstreet loading requirements across large cities; in some of them, such as Los Angeles and Houston, the requirements are so low that most small buildings in city centers are exempt from any required loading space provision. While onstreet loading spaces are currently an important supplement to offstreet ones, interviews with transport planners revealed that the provision of onstreet loading spaces is often ad hoc and based on requests by local businesses. The findings can help transportation planners and engineers better understand how the accommodation of urban freight delivery demand links to urban planning zoning requirements for offstreet loading zones and practices around onstreet loading space provision. The empirical results suggest a localized spatial mismatch between freight loading demand and overall loading supply given the current zoning systems. Such mismatch, which contributes to congestion delays for freight and people as well as road safety impacts, calls for special attention from policymakers by revising offstreet loading requirements in zoning codes and considering proactive processes to ensure adequate onstreet loading zones in high-demand areas.
Introduction
Demand for urban freight deliveries to both businesses and residences has increased substantially in the past decade. In 2010, the United States Post Office, the largest parcel-delivery service in the United States, delivered 3.1 billion packages nationwide while in 2019 it delivered more than 6.2 billion packages (Zaleski 2017; United States Post Office 2020). Along with the benefits of this increased economic activity, the uptick in freight volumes has led to complaints from the public about impacts on our streets. A 2019 Boston Globe editorial stated, “delivery trucks double-park, squat at bus stops, lurch to a halt in travel lanes, and generally make nuisances of themselves” (TheBoston Globe 2019). Newspapers have also chronicled conflicts between freight vehicles and other road users related to road safety (Shaver 2014; Haag and Hu 2019; Smith 2019). Logistics firms themselves face concern for driver safety as well as negative impacts on efficiency from the lack of space in cities for deliveries (Berger 2019). These issues are not unique to the largest cities but also appear in commercial and residential areas in the suburbs (Kuntzman 2018). The academic literature echoes these concerns with researchers linking freight operations road safety (Cherrett et al. 2012; McDonald et al. 2019) and high levels of near-roadway air pollution (Magniol et al. 2018; Yuan 2018).
The underlying cause of congestion, safety, and pollution concerns related to city logistics is the mismatch between supply of freight loading zones and demand for these spaces. When loading zones are not available, delivery drivers use available spaces including the travel lanes, bike lanes, and sidewalks. Loading spaces, which refer to areas used for the loading or unloading of goods or commodities from a vehicle, are essential infrastructure for urban freight deliveries. The two types of loading zones are onstreet and offstreet. While both types are used for moving goods and making deliveries, the provision mechanisms vary. Offstreet loading zones must be planned with new construction; onstreet loading zones can be flexibly determined by municipalities.
Despite attention to the knock-on impacts of limited freight loading and unloading infrastructure, there has been little examination of the urban planning policies and practices that determine the supply of loading zones in the United States. This paper addresses this gap in planning scholarship by examining the regulations and practices that control the provision of loading spaces in major American cities and identifying how the current approach to providing loading zones is not sensitive to supply needs. Future efforts by communities to better balance the supply and demand of freight loading zones and minimize associated problems such as congestion, air pollution, and crashes will require this detailed description of current practice. Through this research, we develop a foundation for further discussions on rebalancing the supply and demand of loading spaces and reorganizing freight loading in a coordinated way. The analysis can help transportation engineers and planners understand how policies that determine the supply of freight loading zones can affect freight delivery efficiency and curb space organization. The paper starts with a literature review of relevant scholarly progress on the topic. In the next section we present methodology and data sources. Then we present the results of our assessment of the state of the practice around planning for on- and offstreet loading zones. The paper ends with a summary of findings and several policy implications associated with these findings.
Background
The dramatic growth in freight demand in recent years has made freight deliveries, especially in urban centers, more inefficient (Giuliano et al. 2018; Sanchez-Diaz and Browne 2018). Truck drivers have found it increasingly difficult to make last-minute deliveries because of the lack of space to drop off goods at businesses or residences. Bomar et al. (2009) noted that, “the limited number of loading/unloading zones available, in addition to the number of vehicles using the spaces for long-term parking, has forced many trucks and other large vehicles to double-park, thereby reducing the capacity of the affected street by one lane of traffic.” Such difficulties in finding loading spaces have caused increased congestion, air pollution, noise, road safety concern, and fuel consumption (Chatterjee et al. 2008). Problems related to freight movement have been more prevalent in the city centers, even many small or mid-size ones.
While many studies in the field of freight planning acknowledge the problem of inadequate loading spaces, few of them provide empirical evidence on how cities in the United States supply and manage onstreet and offstreet loading zones. Research attention has focused on better accommodation of urban freight delivery demand in city cores through innovative strategies such as urban consolidation centers and congestion pricing (Allen et al. 2010). Other demand-side research assessed the parking behaviors of commercial vehicles in different land uses (Giron-Valderrama et al. 2019) and the roles of stakeholders who use the loading zones (Goodchild and Ivanov 2017).
While the focus has been on the demand side, a limited number of empirical studies have examined factors impacting the supply of freight loading zones. Morris (2004) pointed out that New York City's regulations for the number of bays required for offstreet loading facilities have not changed in several decades, but deliveries to commercial properties increased by 300% over the past 30 years. Compared with other cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas and Seattle, New York had lower offstreet loading requirements despite its much higher employment density and freight demand in the city center. Chatterjee et al. (2008) focused on mid-size cities including Greensboro in North Carolina and Fargo in North Dakota to assess how the cities provided onstreet and offstreet loadings spaces. Greensboro had increased the number of curbside loading zones and required new buildings to provide offstreet loading spaces since 1991. However, in Fargo, all curbside loading zones were eliminated and converted to 15-minute parking spaces. To accommodate freight delivery demand, double parking was allowed on roads with more than one lane in one direction. The sharp distinctions in loading space provision between these two cities reflected varying approaches among local planners and transport engineers.
Outside the United States, a few recent studies have explored the supply and demand of loading spaces using empirical data. Demand for loading varies across cities of different sizes. Big cities such as Paris need as many as 10,000 loading bays but for small ones such as Winchester, UK, the number is much smaller (Browne et al. 2007; McLeod and Cherrett 2011). To accommodate the high demand for loading, the Paris Transport Department provided a technical guide for the provision of onstreet loading spaces. The guide imposed a minimum of one delivery space every 100 meters in the city streets (Giuliano 2013). In its 2006 Paris Local Land Use Plan, the city also required main generators of freight to provide loading and unloading areas in their premises proportional to the freight volume they generate (City of Paris 2006). While these building prescriptions, which did not specify the exact number of offstreet loading space required, were vague, the minimum offstreet loading requirements in Barcelona were more specific. The Municipal Ordinance for Offstreet Loading/Unloading Spaces of Barcelona listed the compulsory provisions for loading/unloading spaces in new buildings. For instance, commercial land uses with area between 400 and 1,300 m2 were required to provide a minimum of one offstreet loading space (City of Barcelona 1999).
While the supply and demand of loading spaces largely determines how effectively cities accommodate urban freight deliveries, the efficient use of those spaces is equally important. Browne et al. (2007) found onstreet loading spaces in Paris were only used legitimately 6% of the time, were unused 47% of the time, and occupied illegally by cars for the remaining 47% of the time. De Oliveira and Guerra (2014) found that in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, curbside loading/unloading spaces were occupied by passenger cars 57% of the time, while freight vehicles used the spaces only 35% of the time. A direct consequence of the use of loading zones for nonfreight purposes is increased illegal freight delivery behaviors such as double parking on a driving lane. The 2006 survey in Paris indicated 70% of all deliveries in the city were made illegally (Browne et al. 2007). Meanwhile, many cities tolerated the illegal parking or loading behaviors and seldom issued fines on them. In some London boroughs, parking attendants were instructed not to issue fines to drivers of goods vehicles loading or unloading between 8:30 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. (Browne et al. 2007). Such leniency can also be found in cities of all sizes in the United States. For instance, in Asheville, whose population was less than 100,000, double parking of freight vehicles was quite common and most of the illegal behaviors did not result in any fines or towing (WLOS News 13 2015).
Regarding the shortage and inefficient use of loading spaces, cities have considered adjusting the offstreet loading requirements or reallocating curb space to onstreet loading zones. For instance, Washington, DC implemented a “Downtown Curb-Space Management Program” to improve the efficiency of curb space use and reduce congestion. The program increased commercial vehicle loading space by lengthening loading zones from 40 feet to 100 feet wherever possible and introduced metered loading zones to increase the vehicle turnover rates (Bomar et al. 2009). In addition to the direct measures of increasing loading supply, several cities around the world have also developed innovative strategies to improve the efficiency of freight deliveries. Barcelona required restaurants, bars, cafes, and other similar establishments to provide a storage space so that they can reduce the frequency of freight deliveries (City of Barcelona 1999). The city, as well as a few other cities in the Europe, implemented “multi-use lanes” which can accommodate freight vehicles, buses, bicycles and other different modes in different periods of time. Space management for urban delivery has been increasingly popular among European countries when urban delivery problems become more prevalent (NICHES n.d.). Such practices have not gained adequate attention in cities in the United States although urban deliveries are equally difficult in the city centers.
Method and Data
Our research goal is to assess current planning practices guiding the supply of loading zones in American cities. In most municipalities different processes control the provision of off- and onstreet loading zones. Offstreet loading zone requirements are part of municipality zoning codes and impact new construction. Onstreet loading zones are determined by municipalities and rely on the allocation of curb space. Therefore, we developed separate processes to assess policies and practices regarding on- and offstreet loading zones.
For offstreet loading zones, we assessed city practices by reviewing zoning codes. Offstreet loading spaces are usually part of buildings and city zoning codes set requirements for their provision. We conducted the code review to identify the minimum number of offstreet loading space requirements in each jurisdiction. Specifically, we conducted an online search of each municipalities zoning code using the search terms “loading spaces,” “loading berths,” and “loading zones.” The search terms allowed us to identify the section of code controlling minimum offstreet loading requirements. We then compiled all the requirements together.
To further illustrate variation across cities, we developed scenarios for proposed commercial developments and identified what the offstreet loading space requirements would be in each city. We present four commercial scenarios: Starbucks (2,000 square feet), McDonald’s (4,000 square feet), City Target (20,000 square feet), Whole Foods (38,000 square feet), and three multifamily residential scenarios (apartments of 30, 60, and 120 units). While these scenarios do not represent all possible development situations, they provide a common basis to illustrate the application of the zoning code requirements.
Practices for providing onstreet loading spaces are more heterogenous and less likely to be formally incorporated in municipal codes. As a result of this, we assessed how cities provide onstreet loading zones by (1) conducting online searches of municipal codes and websites, and (2) interviewing municipal planners and transport engineers to understand the way each municipality determines the provision of onstreet loading spaces. For example, interview questions asked how the city determined onstreet loading zones and how they enforced regulations about the use of those spaces. In the following we describe the process for identifying interview respondents.
Study Area
While freight conflicts occur in jurisdictions of all sizes, media reports suggest they are most prevalent in the largest cities. These cities have strong urban cores where freight deliveries are difficult due to the high density and limited road space. We therefore focused on the 20 largest US cities. We also included several cities in North Carolina to provide strong representation of a high-growth state and gain better understanding of the influence of state Department of Transportation policies. Based on these selection criteria, our study area included New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego, Dallas, San Jose, Austin, Jacksonville, San Francisco, Columbus, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Seattle, Denver, and Washington DC along with Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, Durham, Chapel Hill, High Point, and Asheville in North Carolina.
We conducted the online review of municipal code requirements for offstreet loading zones for all cities. We also conducted a separate online search to identify policies for onstreet loading zones policies for all municipalities. For the interviews, we generated a list of 50 potential respondents by searching the municipality website for senior staff responsible for transportation planning or engineering. We contacted each potential interviewee via email or phone to request an interview. Sixteen individuals from 15 jurisdictions agreed to participate in a phone interview. We conducted interviews with staff from New York, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, Philadelphia, Dallas, Seattle, and Washington DC as well as Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, High Point, Asheville, and Greensboro. Interview response rates were higher in North Carolina than the rest of the country likely due to the research teams' affiliation with the University of North Carolina.
Interviews were conducted in 2019 based on a predesigned research protocol and script. Transcripts from the interviews were analyzed to identify similarities and uniqueness of policies, and practices related to onstreet loading provisions across all the cities were summarized and discussed. In addition, general plans, transportation plans, local media outlets including newspapers and websites, and other public documents were also collected and examined to provide a comprehensive understanding of onstreet loading space provision.
Results
Offstreet Loading Requirements
Minimum offstreet loading requirements (MOLRs), like minimum offstreet parking requirements, are a common item in the zoning codes of major cities in the country. Out of the largest 20 municipalities in the United States, only Fort Worth and Denver do not include specific requirements on offstreet loading spaces for new land uses. However, unlike minimum parking requirements, MOLRs, in a progressive way, define the minimum number of loading spaces each type of land uses should provide with regard to the gross floor area of operation. The minimum number of required loading spaces increases by one when the gross floor area increases and reaches the next stage.
Minimum offstreet loading requirements are supposed to be consistent with the amount of freight delivery trips different land uses can generate, however, the design of MOLRs is relatively rough in many cities. While minimum parking requirements cover almost every possible land use category, minimum loading requirements are only applied to a few land use types, presumably with high freight generation rates. Some cities even combine different land use types in the application of MOLRs. For instance, Charlotte only applied MOLRs to nonresidential uses and the requirements did not distinguish specific land use types within this category. In this way, a restaurant that generates three freight trips per day is required to provide the same amount of offstreet loading spaces as a manufacturing plant that generates 1.6 freight trips per day (The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute et al. 2012). Therefore, when freight demand varies across places, the unrefined MOLRs could fail to balance freight loading zone supply and demand.
To compare the MOLRs among the major cities in the United States, we focus on two critical types of land uses that are most common in high-density city centers: commercial and residential. All cities with MOLRs included commercial land uses in the requirements, although the definitions of those land uses can differ. Comparing New York and Los Angeles, we can see in Fig. 1 how the standards of MOLRs in the two cities work. New York required zero loading space for the first 8,000 square feet (gross floor area), one space for the next 17,000 square feet, another one for the next 15,000 square feet, and so on. Between zero and 100,000 square feet, the requirements in New York contained five stages. However, the requirements in Los Angeles were much less structured. Any commercial land uses with less than 50,000 square feet would not have compulsory provision of offstreet loading spaces in Los Angeles. The comparison between New York and Los Angeles indicates the wide variations in MOLRs across the major cities.
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To better illustrate the differences in MOLRs, we report the number of offstreet loading zones required in the zoning code for four common commercial buildings. The selected business types vary in size between 2,000 and 38,000 square feet and land use type (Table 1). Los Angeles, Fort Worth, and Denver did not require any offstreet loading space provision for any scenarios of commercial land uses listed in the table. For the smallest buildings (Starbucks and McDonald's), only San Antonio and Charlotte required a reduced-sized loading space. In all the other cities, small businesses such as coffee shops and fast food restaurants were not required to provide any loading spaces. Those businesses have to rely on onstreet loading spaces or other strategies to receive deliveries.
| City | Scenario 1 | Scenario 2 | Scenario 3 | Scenario 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| An average Starbucks (2,000 square feet) | An average McDonald's (4,000 square feet) | An average City Target (20,000 square feet) | An average Whole Foods (38,000 square feet) | |
| Top 20 in the United States | ||||
| New York | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Los Angeles | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Chicago | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Houston | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Phoenix | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Philadelphia | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| San Antonioa | 1 (reduced size) | 1 (reduced size) | 2 | 2 |
| San Diego | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Dallas | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| San Jose | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Austin | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Jacksonville | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| San Francisco | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Columbus | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Fort Worth | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Indianapolis | 0 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Charlottea | 1 (reduced size) | 1 (reduced size) | 1 | 2 |
| Seattle | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Denver | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Washington DC | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Top 4 in NC | ||||
| Charlottea | 1 (reduced size) | 1 (reduced size) | 1 | 2 |
| Raleigh | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Greensboro | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Durham | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
a
For Scenario 1 and 2, San Antonio and Charlotte required commercial land uses to provide offstreet loading spaces with reduced sizes.
As online shopping becomes increasingly popular in this era of e-commerce, the demand for home deliveries soars. In the city centers with many high-density multifamily apartments, the frequency of home deliveries had recently increased in these areas (Zaleski 2017). To understand how MOLRs address loading zone demand, we consider the required loading spaces for small, medium, and large apartment buildings in each city (Table 2). Note that MOLRs in different cities used various units including residential units, gross floor area, and land area occupied. Nine out of the 20 cities required no offstreet loading spaces in the Scenario 3 of the large condo apartment with 120 units and gross floor area of 100,000 square feet. In those cities, home delivery vehicles such as UPS and FedEx trucks have to make deliveries in the onstreet loading spaces, which may not be always available. Double parking of these delivery vehicles is thus easily seen in the downtown areas.
| City | Scenario 1 | Scenario 2 | Scenario 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small apartment building (30 units, 25,000 square feet, occupying land of 0.7 acres) | Medium apartment building (60 units, 50,000 square feet, occupying land of 1 acre) | Large apartment building (120 units, 100,000 square feet, occupying land of 1.5 acre) | |
| Top 20 in the United Statesa | |||
| New York | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Los Angeles | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Chicago | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Houston | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Phoenix | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Philadelphia | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| San Antonio | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| San Diego | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Dallas | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| San Jose | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Austin | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Jacksonville | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| San Francisco | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Columbus | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Fort Worth | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Indianapolis | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Charlotte | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Seattle | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Denver | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Washington DC | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Top 4 in NC | |||
| Charlotte | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Raleigh | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Greensboro | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Durham | 0 | 0 | 0 |
a
Top cities refer to those with the largest population sizes.
Onstreet Loading
Freight deliveries in many cities depend on onstreet loading spaces. This results from the prevalence of older buildings that may predate requirements for offstreet loading zones as well as the relatively modest offstreet loading zone requirements in place even for new development. Results from interviews with transportation engineers and planners confirmed this hypothesis. An interviewee from North Carolina acknowledged that most downtown businesses do not have access to designated offstreet loading spaces and have to compete for storefront spaces.
Interviews with planners and engineers involved in the allocation of onstreet loading zones identified several themes including ad hoc approaches to provision, need for cross-agency coordination, enforcement of onstreet loading spaces, innovative initiatives, and conflicts with other priorities. Table 3 summarizes these themes and illustrates how policies and practices related to onstreet loading provision vary across the cities.
| Interview themes | Major results | Representative cities |
|---|---|---|
| Onstreet loading provision approach | • On an ad hoc basis; constrained by existing pattern of curb space allocation | Durham, Greensboro, Houston, Charlotte |
| Institutional involvement | • Involving multiple departments and agencies | Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Phoenix |
• Establishing independent agencies to deal with the issue | Philadelphia and Washington, DC | |
| Loading space request process | • Requested by local businesses with delivery demand | High Point, Philadelphia |
| Onstreet loading space design | • Lack of interdepartmental collaboration | Chapel Hill, Raleigh |
| Law enforcement of loading space uses | • Relying on police department | Asheville, High Point, Raleigh |
• Relying on independent agencies | Philadelphia, Washington, DC | |
| Relevant initiatives and programs | • Developing pilot programs to optimize curb space management | Washington, DC, Raleigh, Charlotte, Philadelphia |
| Concern over conflicts between transportation modes | • Loading zones and activities may affect walking environment | Seattle, Philadelphia |
Ad hoc Provision Processes
Despite the importance of onstreet loading zones to urban goods movement, the provision of these spaces is often ad hoc. As a traffic operations engineer from Durham noted: “The need for loading zones is dependent on the number and type of businesses, which is a moving target. But the sizes and location of these zones depends on many factors. After all, loading zones compete with parking spaces, which is more valuable depending on who you ask.” Moreover, the flexibility of onstreet loading space allocation, which is not a new event, has been much constrained by the existing curbside space arrangement. A transport engineer talked about the allocation of curb space to onstreet loading zones in Greensboro, “The location of onstreet loading spaces was a legacy from historical curb space allocation. We have not really made changes to those spaces in the recent years.” Similar comments were also made by interviewees from High Point, Houston, and Charlotte.
In most cities, requests for installing new loading zones can be made by local businesses. For example, the Philadelphia Parking Authority provides an online loading zone application form, which can be used by local businesses to submit a request to establish a new loading zone. The form contains information on (1) the business (name, address, and nature of business); (2) loading zone (location, size, present parking regulations, and curb space ownership); and (3) loading demand (number of daily pickups/deliveries, hours to be used, and length of delivery vehicles) (Philadelphia Parking Authority 2011). However, the request for new loading spaces does not necessarily result in a final installation of those spaces: “If there is a bus lane, the request can lead to a major conflict and would be denied. But if it is a parking space, the likelihood of getting it approved is much higher” (interviewee from Philadelphia, August 28, 2019). A transportation planning administrator from the City of High Point said the city would generally discuss with local businesses before assigning any curb space to freight loading/unloading functions (interviewee from High Point, August 26, 2019). The information can greatly help transportation engineers and managers better match the supply and demand of loading in a precise way.
Requires High Degree of Coordination across Agencies
The provision of onstreet loading spaces can involve multiple city departments increasing the institutional complexity of managing these zones. For example, the District Department of Transportation (Washington DC) works with the Metropolitan Police Department and the Department of Public Works on the provision of onstreet loading spaces. In Durham, the Department of Public Works has the authority to install or remove loading zones but works with the Department of Transportation, which provides the expertise on the size and location of the zones. When receiving a request for a loading zone from local businesses in Downtown Durham, the Department of Transportation asks Downtown Durham Inc., a 501 c(6) organization, to work with nearby residents and businesses to see if they support the proposed change. Similarly, Philadelphia established a state-controlled agency: the Philadelphia Parking Authority. As a respondent from Philadelphia stated: “Our Department of Streets in the city works with the Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems (OTIS). We set the rules and publish the regulations of parking spaces, loading spaces, and a lot of variations. The Philadelphia Parking Authority does the implementation: put the sign and do the enforcement. We all work together, especially when making any kinds of changes.”
These examples highlight the high degree of coordination across agencies required to make changes to onstreet loading zones. Such collaboration can be particularly vital in the design of loading zones as well. While engineers in the departments of transportation and public works can accurately complete the design work based on existing technical standards, they may still need to closely work with colleagues from departments of planning and police, who are more familiar with the actual use of the zones in the real world. For instance, onstreet loading spaces are usually used by a mixed group of businesses and occupied by various forms of freight vehicles. Planners and police officers can offer valuable suggestions on how the spaces can be designed to accommodate the varying demand of loading.
Enforcement
Respondents mentioned difficulties in enforcing the rules of onstreet loading spaces. Even in small cities such as High Point, “more and more violations are found in the downtown area and police officers have been issuing warning tickets to make sure the loading spaces are better used” (interviewee from High Point, August 26, 2019). However, warning tickets are far from enough in many other downtown areas. “Loading spaces are often occupied by nonfreight vehicles. Delivery vehicles have to double park on the streets. It is hard to really eliminate those behaviors by issuing warning tickets,” a traffic engineer from Asheville talked about their concern. While the city departments of transport (DOTs) had noticed the illegal occupation of those spaces by passenger cars in many locations, engineers acknowledged that enforcement is complicated and can be difficult. A traffic engineer from Raleigh mentioned the difficulty in addressing illegal parking by themselves: “We definitely know the loading zones are not always used by freight delivery trucks. But it is not our business to rule out those illegal parking or loading.” Such difficulties can also be found in cities such as Asheville, Houston, and Dallas. This common dilemma, which is deeply rooted in the aforementioned institutional fragmentation of freight related policymaking, could greatly weaken the benefits of onstreet loading zones for freight deliveries.
Innovation
Some cities included in the interviews have recently adopted initiatives or pilot programs to improve the allocation of loading spaces. Philadelphia had initiated a six-month pilot program of optimizing curb space on Chestnut Street, one of its major downtown streets. “The Office of Transportation and Infrastructure Systems redesigned all the parking and loading spaces on the street to open up more opportunities for all-day deliveries. The city will evaluate the data after the installation of new loading spaces and consider whether to expand the program to other major streets. Philadelphia is also considering an overnight delivery program for soda companies and other delivery firms” (interviewee from Philadelphia, August 28, 2019). Chicago launched a Downtown Loading Zone Reform Pilot Program in 2017 to convert business-paid commercial loading zones to user-paid loading zones in the central business district. The program helped “reduce misuse of loading zones by noncommercial vehicles and increase the turnover of the loading zone uses through charging commercial vehicles for using the zones” (interviewee from Chicago, August 30, 2019). Raleigh is also considering restructuring its curb space management. A transport engineer from Raleigh quoted their recent downtown development and future parking needs study: “We hired a consulting company to make a curb lane management study and we hope to develop a plan of reallocating the curb space. To improve the efficiency of deliveries to our local businesses is our major goal” (interviewee from Raleigh, August 26, 2019; also see Kimley-Horn and Associates 2017).
Conflicts with Other Priorities
Finally, people from cities including Philadelphia and Seattle expressed their concern regarding installing more loading spaces: “Our city is a very pedestrian-oriented city, especially the downtown area. We do not want to do anything in terms of making curb cuts across sidewalks that would damage our walking environment. So if loading zones would affect our pedestrians, we have to reevaluate the proposal” (interviewee from Philadelphia, August 28, 2019). The conflicts between different modes of transportation in the dense urban cores have become a major barrier for addressing the urban freight loading problem, according to many of the interviewees.
Discussion
This study provides a comprehensive examination of the urban planning policies and practices that determine freight loading zone supply in major American cities. We find that most cities have requirements in place through their zoning codes for offstreet loading zones. However, offstreet loading is unlikely to independently resolve the difficulty in urban deliveries. First, these requirements only apply to new construction and therefore will only have modest impacts in most cities. Second, offstreet requirements often fail to correlate with freight traffic demand. In some cities, the same offstreet loading zone requirements were applied to commercial land uses with very different freight trip generation rates. We also found current MOLRs paid inadequate attention to high-density residential development. The massive growth in home deliveries makes residential land uses more and more relevant in offstreet loading provision. However, a large proportion of the top 20 cities in the United States failed to take this trend into consideration and did not require loading zones for large apartment buildings. Third, even well-designed requirements for loading zones face the same challenges as minimum parking requirements that have been shown to be inflexible and raise development costs.
Owing to limited provision of offstreet loading zones, all cities rely heavily on onstreet loading zones for freight delivery. Our analysis revealed that the planning of onstreet spaces is highly complex. Current provision of spaces is determined by historical precedent with few cities reporting systematic approaches to reviewing and allocating onstreet spaces. Changing the supply of onstreet spaces relies on requests from businesses coupled with review often by multiple city agencies and even quasi-public actors. Enforcement of onstreet loading regulations is a difficult task and is likely to become more difficult as ridehailing services search for pick up and drop off areas. The shortage of onstreet loading spaces combined with illegal occupation by passenger vehicles contributes to the temporal and spatial mismatch of loading supply and demand.
Our analysis of freight loading zones finds modest connection between the policies and practices governing the supply of these spaces and demand. Requirements for offstreet loading zones are not based on freight trip generation rates nor have they been updated recently in many cities. Onstreet loading zones are more responsive to business needs as they are generally based on requests from local businesses. However, planners and engineers must balance these requests with fiscal pressures for parking revenue, preferences of other nearby residents and business owners, and difficulties coordinating action among multiple city agencies. Taken together, it is small surprise that in many cities there is a mismatch between supply and demand for freight loading areas that results in negative externalities such as congestion, safety impacts, and air pollution.
However, transportation planners have strategies available to improve the situation. A first step is acknowledgment that city logistics patterns have changed with the rise of e-commerce, requiring identification of freight generation hotspots. The review of current delivery patterns should focus on temporal and spatial variation. This information can be used to update MOLRs in zoning codes to better match supply and demand. It can also assist planners to prioritize areas for the installation of onstreet loading spaces as well as areas to consider for enforcement of current loading space regulations.
Second, cities need to engage the departments and organizations related to the installation and management of freight loading spaces in improving the efficiency of loading supply and services. Interdepartmental collaboration can effectively address the fragmentation problem in the provision and law enforcement of the loading system. As we argued earlier, urban planners, transport engineers, police officers, and public workers can all make a useful contribution to the reorganization of curb space. Planners can also involve stakeholders from logistics firms and business groups to identify other strategies for coordinated action.
The next option is to test innovative practices for freight loading zones that promote flexibility. Some cities have converted onstreet spaces to fee-based commercial loading zones. Pricing the spaces reduces enforcement problems. Cities are also looking at flexible implementation of these fee-based loading zones that might be exclusive to freight only during certain hours and available to all vehicles at other hours. App-based solutions for parking payment have made these new solutions possible. Another option is to follow the example of cities including New York, Philadelphia, and San Antonio that offer the option of joint/sharing offstreet loading spaces in their minimum loading requirements. These options can guarantee a minimum level of loading supply without dramatically increasing development costs.
Finally, the interviews emphasized the need for freight delivery solutions to fit with each community’s existing priorities. For example, in cities with strong Vision Zero programs that aim to reduce road fatalities, it will be critical that loading zone solutions do not create conflicts between delivery vehicles and vulnerable road users. This might require strong design requirements for offstreet loading zones to avoid excessive curb cuts in areas with high pedestrian traffic.
The growth in urban freight volumes is unlikely to slow. Urban planners and engineers will be increasingly challenged to develop strategies to promote efficient delivery and reduce externalities such as congestion, crashes, and air pollution. These issues are likely to be most significant in the downtown areas of major cities where strong demand for freight deliveries combine with limited road space, low stock of available curbside space, and high density of passenger transportation activities. This article provides planners and engineers with information on current practice in major American cities and strategies to begin considering how regulations and practices in their community align demand for freight loading zones with the supply of these spaces.
Our research is subject to some limitations. We did not interview people at departments of public works and police who were also usually involved in the provision and management of loading spaces. Their opinions and practices could be important but our research scope focused on urban planning. Second, we examined the current adopted zoning code to identify offstreet loading zone requirements. This means we were unable to identify cities in the process of updating their zoning code, which could impact these requirements.
Conclusion
As demand for freight deliveries increases in American cities, there is a growing mismatch between supply and demand of loading zones. Without adequate loading spaces, delivery vehicles rely on available space such as travel lanes, bike lanes, and sidewalks. The result is increased congestion, air pollution, and safety concerns for delivery drivers and other road users. This study examined how planners and engineers manage the supply of freight loading zones through zoning codes and practices in major cities in the United States and North Carolina.
We found that the current freight loading supply system is not well designed to meet rapidly growing needs for freight delivery in cities. Most large cities have provisions to require offstreet loading zones for new constructions. However, we found that most of the cities required zero offstreet loading zones for small and medium-size businesses and apartment buildings despite rapid increases in deliveries particularly to residences. Onstreet loading zones are, in most cases, installed on an ad hoc basis and largely depend on the availability of curb space.
Strategies exist to better match freight loading space supply with the need for these spaces. These include analysis of current freight delivery patterns to update zoning codes and prioritize allocation of onstreet spaces; increased collaboration among city agencies including planning, engineering, public works as well as external stakeholders from business groups and logistics firms; and conducting pilots of innovative solutions around fee-based commercial loading zones.
Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The data available upon request includes municipal codes regarding minimum loading space and summaries of interview results.
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Journal of Urban Planning and Development
Volume 147 • Issue 2 • June 2021
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This work is made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
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Received: Nov 8, 2019
Accepted: Dec 16, 2020
Published online: Mar 3, 2021
Published in print: Jun 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Aug 3, 2021
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