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In some businesses like supermarkets and restaurants, local restrictions on nighttime deliveries leave distributors no choice but to dispatch trucks during morning rush hours. But lifting these rules could reduce peak traffic volumes and increase transport efficiency, according to a recent study involving researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Some communities prohibit heavy trucks from operating during the night. Stockholm is one of them, but the city wanted to test if lifting its ban might yield some benefits in transportation efficiency. Anna Pernestål Brenden, a researcher at KTH's Integrated Transport Research Laboratory, and acoustic, transport efficiency, and policy researchers from the KTH, joined with other partners in a pilot study with the City of Stockholm to see if lifting the 10 to 6 a.m. ban on truck deliveries made sense.
They worked with a national supermarket chain and its suburban Stockholm central warehouse, as well as with a company that supplied food to restaurants and hotels, Pernestål Brenden says.
Ordinarily the supermarket warehouse, which is some 30km north of Stockholm, would deploy several fully-loaded trucks to make deliveries during peak morning rush hours from 6 to 8, because there is no way for one truck to make them all in that short a time span.
But in the study, a single truck delivered goods to three stores in central Stockholm between the prohibited hours of 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. It would return to the warehouse three times in the night to be reloaded, and then make its subsequent delivery, she says. "That's one truck doing the work of three, or in other words – morning commuters are spared having to share the road with three heavy duty trucks."
Though it was a small scale study, Pernestål Brenden says there are strong indications that scaling up off-peak deliveries could increase business efficiency for suppliers and retailers, reduce fuel consumption and CO2 emissions and perhaps make a positive impact on traffic volume during peak morning hours.
Fewer drivers will clock fewer hours.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:38AM (6 children)
One main reason trucks aren't allowed to go through residential areas at night is air brakes. So rather than an outright ban, mandating smaller trucks with hydraulic brakes (less than ~12000 kg) should do the job without the blast.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 25 2017, @05:41AM
Day shift workers need to check their privledge. They have discriminatory laws to protect their precious quiet sleepy-weepy time, and then they all simultaneously run their lawn mowers when night shift workers are trying to sleep.
Shift-ism is going to be the next big thing in victimhood. The oppression of night shift workers must come to an end. Why, I can't even access critical government services paid for by my tax dollars. I went to the public library at 3AM; it was closed!
When I went to the bakery to order my wedding cake at 3AM, the doors were locked! The gays sued and got their wedding cake. Now where's my cake? I'm going to sue!
#JusticeIs24/7
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:41PM
Many towns in the West have "No Jake Brakes" signs on the outskirts of town for that reason. Seems like it could work generally.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Thursday May 25 2017, @12:51PM
This is also a good use for electric delivery vehicles. Most of these vehicles that are doing deliveries into downtown cores aren't long-haul truckers. An electric delivery truck can get in and out of a city a lot quieter than a diesel one, and of course with fewer on-site emissions.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 25 2017, @02:30PM (2 children)
Hmmm. I'm not certain that you meant what you said, or said what you meant.
Air brakes are standard on all big trucks, for valid safety reasons. That has been true since my grandfather's time. (Well, the last years of his career, anyway.) Air brakes really aren't very noisy. See Phoenix' post below, regarding Jake brakes, or Jacob's brakes. The abuse of Jake brakes has resulted in a lot of ordinances against their use. But, even those noisy Jake brakes aren't all that noisy, if installed and used correctly. When I drove, I never turned my Jake brakes off when I came to a town. I just made sure that it was on the lowest setting, then I drove sensibly through town. My brakes rattled right beside police cars many a time, and the cops didn't even look at me.
The really loud Jake brakes are always set on "Max" setting, and the noise is dumped into a 12 inch straight exhaust pipe, which only amplifies the noise of the Jake brake. That 12 inch pipe acts as a resonator, and it rattles very nicely, in synch with the air compression brakes.
You have to be a very light sleeper to be awakened by a properly maintained truck driving through your neighborhood. That is, IF you have a grocery store down the block that needs night deliveries.
(Score: 2) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Thursday May 25 2017, @03:58PM (1 child)
Sure, air brakes are faster and more efficient than hydraulic brakes and they are used on larger trucks. But many residential areas don't allow trucks through with air brakes - at least where I live. There are signs prohibiting air brake use on the (many) hills. They do make a lot of noise, or maybe as you say - the ones that aren't optimally taken care of do.
So my point was that if smaller trucks with hydraulic brakes are used, this can be avoided. Electric trucks would make the most sense in the city at night, once Tesla or Nicola or whoever gets some market share.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 25 2017, @04:13PM
Ohhhh-kay. Let me ask where you are from? I think we have a terminology thing going on here. Again, even poorly to moderately well maintained air brakes aren't very loud. I've never seen a sign banning air brakes. I've seen many a sign banning engine compression and/or Jacob's brakes. I'm pretty convinced that you are referring to Jake brakes when you say "air brakes". If you're not from the continental US, your use of the terms probably doesn't match my use.