The adoption of eco-friendly transport and innovative shipping and delivery management systems will be critical in building the smart cities of the future
UPS will continue to actively work with city partners in Dubai, the UAE and around the world.
If we want to achieve the fullest benefit of the new mobility future, all those with a stake in urban planning need to get to work rethinking transportation policy.
Over half the world’s population already lives in cities, and over the next 30 years, two billion more people are expected to become urban residents. By 2050, nearly 70 percent of the world’s population will be urban dwellers.
Cities, residents, governments and businesses need to think carefully about the challenges associated with this growth — like overstressed infrastructure and traffic congestion. The demographic and cultural shift to cities means we need proactive strategies and solutions to address these looming concerns.
At the same time, consumer demands and shopping habits are quickly changing. Not only are we experiencing rapid urbanisation, we’re also seeing a shift in buying preferences that are enabled by new technologies.
One of the most prominent of these megatrends is the growth of e-commerce, which is estimated to hit $3.5 trillion in 2019 and more than double to $6.5tr in 2023. The rise of e-commerce doesn’t just have an outsized economic impact though — it has dramatic implications for how we design our transportation networks and how we plan our cities.
The transportation market itself is also undergoing a dramatic transformation. Ride-sharing companies are reshaping the mobility ecosystem as we know it, and more change is on the way. Bike-sharing, scooter-sharing and so many more technologies are guiding us toward the future of mobility as a service (MAAS).
And if that weren’t enough, you also have the advent of autonomous vehicles looming on the horizon, groundbreaking alternative fuel developments, and completely new concepts like Hyperloop.
If we want to achieve the fullest benefit of the new mobility future, all those with a stake in urban planning need to get to work rethinking transportation policy, investing in critical infrastructure and enabling a better quality of life for all. It’s an achievable goal, but only through collaboration.
City partnerships, coupled with advances in alternative fuels and delivery solutions, and innovative shipping and delivery management systems, will provide a path forward for smart cities and companies like UPS to create solutions that help reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.
UPS has more than 30 active projects around the world devoted to testing the feasibility of cycle logistics alone — which may not sound high-tech but really is when it’s efficiently deployed through an optimal route delivery system. We’ve rolled out our unique “e-assist” cargo bikes in Hamburg, Munich, London, Dublin, Paris, Portland and many other cities, including a test project at the Expo 2020 site in Dubai, and the results have been positive.
We load the day’s packages into a container that is dropped off in a central location in the city. UPS drivers then use alternative methods to make deliveries from that container throughout the city centre and in pedestrian-only zones — including walkers, conventional tricycles, electrically assisted tricycles and e-quad bikes.
In the right kind of neighbourhood, with the right kind of route, with the right kind of support from a city, these sustainable, human-scaled technologies hold a great deal of promise.
