Occasional Home Delivery Allows Me To Shop as a Pedestrian, Transit User Most of the Time

A reader brought up a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a while now. Moe asked how I’d get a Christmas tree home since I don’t have a car, here’s the thread:

Moe expressed a common, but fundamentally flawed view: that everyone driving a car is more efficient than using delivery services. Researchers have been looking into this topic for a while and the results are interesting and surprising. From 2009:

Books are by far the most popular items purchased through the Internet. In just the past two years, the number of consumers buying books online rose by nearly 10 percent. Most patronize book “e-tailers” because of lower prices, but done right, online bookselling also has a smaller carbon footprint.

Like any good novel, the story of how a bookworm gets her book has a beginning, a middle and an end. A book destined for a brick-and-mortar store is printed, packed in bulk, transported by heavy-duty truck to a publisher’s warehouse, transferred to an intermediate warehouse or two, and delivered to the bookstore. Customers might then drive 15 or more miles round trip to purchase the exciting new title. A book sold online has a slightly different plot line: after arrival at the publisher’s warehouse, air or freight travel to a sorting center and individual repackaging, its dramatic finale is home delivery by light-duty truck.

Transportation is the biggest contributor to carbon emissions in both retail and e-tail product pathways. When purchasing a book from a bookstore, each household drives separately, but delivery trucks take purchases to many customers on a single route. There’s also a decent chance that the delivery truck is more fuel-efficient than your family sedan. UPS, for example, has invested millions of dollars in alternative fuel technologies, and as of 2008, its fleet included more than 10,000 low-emission, hydraulic, hydrogen fuel cell and electric vehicles.

When it comes to packaging, however, brick-and-mortar bookshops generally claim the environmental edge. Shrink-wrapping, padding and boxing each individual novella, as e-tailers do, is hardly going to maximize materials efficiency and minimize waste. (Walking to a used bookstore, or downloading an ebook, will do exactly that—but we haven’t been asked about those options yet!)

Both online and brick-and-mortar booksellers operate climate-controlled storage warehouses, but retailers usually own or lease additional storage and distribution facilities. Likewise, the energy consumed to browse and purchase books online is much less than that needed to build, light, heat, and cool physical bookstores. By streamlining the purchase and delivery process, e-tailers minimize the need for buildings and their associated energy usage. (Sanford Magazine) 

Online retailer Amazon has been working to reduce packaging:

Launched in 2008 with 19 products, participation in the initiative has grown from 4 to over 2,000 manufacturers, including Fisher-Price, Mattel, Unilever, Seventh Generation, Belkin, Victorinox Swiss Army, Logitech and many more. To date, Amazon has shipped over 75 million Frustration-Free items to 175 countries.

Frustration-Free Packaging also reduces waste for customers. So far, the initiative has:

• Eliminated 58.9 million square feet of cardboard
• Removed 24.7 million pounds of packaging
• Reduced box sizes by 14.5 million cubic feet

Amazon customers have helped guide the program with their ratings and feedback on product packaging. (Sustainable Brands)

Disclosure: I’m an Amazon (AMZN) shareholder.

Grocery delivery is another that is growing in popularity and researchers looked at this in a recent case study in the Seattle area:

Home food delivery trucks, they found, produce 20 to 75 percent less carbon dioxide than having the same households drive to the store. The variation is based on how close people live to the store, the number of people in the neighborhood getting food delivered and the efficiency of the truck’s route. (NPR: Grocery Home Delivery May Be Greener Than Schlepping To The Store)

What’s surprising is how home delivery results in bigger reductions in rural/suburban areas vs urban areas due to distances traveled.  If you take the time to think about it, it does make sense. Those who live in rural & suburban areas drive many more miles than those who live in more compact urban centers.

So yes, I do have items delivered at times. With roughly 80 units in our condo association, UPS & FedEx are here almost daily anyway. By shopping locally using my electric wheelchair, taking MetroBus &/or MetroLink to stores, I’ve reduced my carbon footprint substantially over driving a car for those trips. Having items delivered, especially the occasional large bully item, allows me to do most of my shopping as a pedestrian and transit user.

As an informed consumer, I do sleep better at night.

— Steve Patterson

Readers Like Bike Lanes, Overlook Design Flaws

An overwhelming majority of readers like bike lanes, at least according to the unscientific poll last week:

Q: Which of the following best fits your view of bike lanes:

1. Bike lanes are important, should be incorporated into street designs 75 [48.7%]
2. Bike lanes are a great idea that needs to be taken to the next level 44 [28.57%]
3. Bike lanes help keep cyclists out of my way when driving 16 [10.39%]
4. Bikes are traffic, shouldn’t be segregated to the side 10 [6.49%]
5. Bike lanes aren’t needed, give novice riders a false sense of security 3 [1.95%]
6. Bicyclists should use sidewalks, not have their own lane 3 [1.95%]
7. Doesn’t matter to me 2 [1.3%]
8. Unsure/no answer 1 [0.65%]

This is despite some serious flaws in how they’re often implemented, especially in St. Louis.

The bike lane often becomes part of the automobile right turn lane, novice cyclists move over the right instead of holding their position. A cyclist going straight ahead shouldn’t be to the right of a car turning right — that’s a formula for conflict. Other cities do a much better job.

Bike lanes are great at keeping the cyclist to the right of vehicles, but leave the novice cyclist at a loss as to how to make a left turn. To turn left a skilled cyclist on the roads will make their way from the right lane, to left lane, to the left turn lane — just as you would if driving a car.  However, with bike lanes present, motorists get upset with cyclists who don’t stay in their bike lane.  How do you get from point to point without left turns?

If we’re going to have bike lanes I think they need to be designed far better, not just be a way to deal with excess roadway width.

— Steve Patterson

Intern Learned How To Be A City Dweller

The following is a guest post from Brandon Sampson, my research intern this semester – SP:

Cities reflect their builders and inhabitants. In a way cities are like living organisms, constantly growing, dying, and changing. This past semester working with Steve, I have started to learn how to be a city dweller. This might seem like a rather silly statement. If you live in an urban area, you live in an urban area. But one of the many things Steve has taught me is that, living within a city area is similar to being in a relationship with someone.

It takes:

1. Commitment: We humans throughout our time on this planet have been shaped and helped shape the environments we have chosen to inhabit. For us to be in a healthy relationship with our chosen cities we have to take care of it. This means constructing environments that are conducive to human interaction and growth. City dwellers have to be committed to the urban space, so the city evolves in ways that help the community grow.
2. Listening: The cities have a language of their own. A dweller has to pay attention to the language of the urban environment. Everyone once and awhile, an urbanite needs to stop, ask, and think “What is the city telling me?” If people pay attention, they can know if something is helping their communities grow or shrink. Perhaps it can be as simple as a street diet to allow more pedestrian-friendly walkways, or as big as examining the ways a city segregates populations from each other.
3. Time: Cities can be as authentic as we want them to be. We can allow companies and government policies run how cities develop, or we urbanites can be active in the process and help guide policies in ways that are conducive to the surrounding community. Also it takes learning. Proper city development has become a lost art among Americans, as a century of bad city development has manipulated how we think a city should be. Steve throughout the semester has given me the chance to read books that reveal how we can learn from our mistakes and begin the steady and slow process of helping construct healthy environments.
4. A little bit of love: All living things need a little bit of lovin’. Cities are no different. This means the physical city and those that live inside them. Remembering the little things, such as a sidewalk that needs repaving or a ramp that needs to be replaced. These little and big things help connect people together. Allowing diverse communities to coexist and work and play with each other is essential to a livable urban space.

But above all, the single most important lesson I’ve learned from interning with Steve about urban environments is how to see everything in the city as interconnected. He has done this by giving me the resources to learn and explore the policies, history, and process a city has to undergo to function and expand. And what is the most important part of this is interconnectness is that it is possible for anyone to learn the things I learned.

— Brandon Sampson

Brandon, a suburban Tulsa native, is an undergrad at Saint Louis University. He’ll be studying in Budapest in Spring 2014.

Lindell & Euclid: Worth the Wait

In April 2006 it looked like Opus Development would be moving forward on a high-rise condo tower at the NE corner of Lindell & Euclid. They’d revised the base and been granted a variance to permit the height. However, the project was abandoned even before the economy crashed.

Now Opus is back with a new proposal for the corner, Ald. Lyda Krewson tweeted on December 6th “Lindell Residences proposed for Lindell/Euclid – 217 first class apts.” with this pic attached:

Back in 2006 the historic code required heights to be relative to other buildings. The language, like many of our historic codes, was poorly written. Today the Central West End’s form-based code isn’t wishy-washy: maximum of 12 stories at this location.

The new form-based code and the mixed-use project one block south with apartments over a Whole Foods likely renewed interest in this conner. Ok, it is apartments instead of $300k condos. No big deal, when I rented an efficiency in The President 2 doors to the east in 1990 an A.G. Edwards VP rented the large apartment next door! Rental apartments aren’t a bad thing at all.

While a tall tower makes the skyline more interesting, the latest proposal will have a bigger positive impact. The decision to go underground with most of the parking makes the base more appropriate.

I’m glad the 26-story building proposed in 2006 didn’t happen, the new proposal was worth the wait.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Will Your Household Have a Christmas Tree? If So, What Type?

When my boyfriend moved in with me in February he said he’ll wanted to put up Christmas decorations, including a tree.  I’m atheist and he’s agnostic, but Christmas is one of his favorite holidays. It was a long way off so I agreed.

A Christmas tree in a non-Christian home? Sure, a recent study even showed that Christmas trees appear in some Jewish households too:

About a third of Jews (32%) say they had a Christmas tree in their home last year, including 27% of Jews by religion and 51% of Jews of no religion. Erecting a Christmas tree is especially common among Jews who are married to non-Jews; 71% of this group says they put up a tree last year.

Compared with younger Jews, those 65 and older are somewhat less likely to have had a Christmas tree last year. And relatively few Orthodox Jews, including just 1% of Ultra-Orthodox Jews, say there was a Christmas tree in their home last year. (Pew Research)

By ’73 or ’74 we stopped using the aluminum tree, we got a new green artificial tree from Montgomery Ward or Sears. We never had a cut tree. My maternal grandparents were very religious Mennonites, but they never had a tree of any kind. Probably deemed too flashy.

For budget reasons we got a very small white artificial tree for this year, adorned with four South Park ornaments I had. We also decorated our front door.  For next year I’m not crazy about a cut tree — what he’s used to. Why should a tree have to die just to hold lights & ornaments for a few weeks?

Next year I’d like to do a live Christmas tree, I just need to figure out where it’ll get planted after we’re done with it. Can it get planted in a city park?

The poll question this week asks if your household will have a tree and, if so, what type? The poll is in the right sidebar, results will be published on Wednesday December 25th.

— Steve Patterson