Solving the last-mile delivery issue in New York City

If you've ever driven in New York City, you've likely experienced the frustration of being stuck behind a double-parked delivery vehicle. A potential solution, however, could lie in the creation of microhubs.

A recent report from Columbia University focusing on the environmental impact of e-commerce suggests that microhubs could utilize vacant office and retail space, or even repurpose outdoor unused areas into small distribution centers. These centers would facilitate last-mile delivery, easily accessible by electric bikes or walkers.

The report draws a comparison to Amazon's current operations in NYC, but proposes microhubs operating within controlled environments, thus eliminating the issue of trucks double-parked on the streets during package sorting.

Jordan Goldstein, the report’s project manager, said microhubs “seemed the most feasible” of all possible freight-traffic-reduction strategies because it works, is relatively inexpensive to implement, and cause the most disruption of the current, flawed system.

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