To leverage its long coastline for delivery and get polluting trucks off the streets, the city is looking to the private sector for ideas.<\/p>\n
Listen to the article3 min<\/p>\n
New York City wants to\u00a0turn its waterways into \u201cblue highways\u201d<\/a>\u00a0for delivering goods, announcing last week that it\u2019s on the hunt for creative ideas from the private sector on how to make the idea a reality.<\/p>\n Millions of packages are now delivered daily by large trucks that pollute and clog roads in New York City. But \u201cwith a city coastline stretching longer than Miami, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco combined, there is an exciting opportunity to develop a regional freight network to move our goods more safely and efficiently,\u201d NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Ydanis Rodriguez said in a statement.<\/p>\n The city said the request for private sector feedback on blue highways will help it develop a potential pilot program to move more freight with marine vessels. The feedback could also lead to capital investments, such as modernizing marine terminals.\u00a0<\/p>\n Delivery of goods can be a dirty business \u2014 and the negative impacts are projected to get worse.\u00a0<\/p>\n With consumers doing more online shopping, global emissions from local delivery traffic are expected to increase 32% by 2030, according to a new National League of Cities action guide examining\u00a0how cities can decarbonize delivery<\/a>.\u00a0Traffic congestion from delivery traffic is predicted to add 11 minutes of commute time per person in the world\u2019s 100 largest cities, the action guide says.<\/p>\n Despite New York being a \u201ccity of islands,\u201d less than 10% of its freight is transported via waterways,\u00a0said Deputy Mayor for Operations Meera Joshi\u00a0in a statement.<\/p>\n New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes said in a statement that the heavy, oversize trucks that deliver a bulk of New Yorkers packages are \u201ccrumbling our roads into the ground.\u201d The hundreds of freight trucks that drive through South Bronx neighborhoods daily are directly correlated to some of the nation\u2019s highest asthma rates, City Council Member Amanda Far\u00edas said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEfficiency, cost-effectiveness, and environmental justice have to be our top priorities,\u201d\u00a0Far\u00edas\u00a0<\/strong>said. \u201cThe recently announced Blue Highways initiative meets all three and is exactly the kind of initiative I want to continue seeing from our City.\u201d<\/p>\n To make blue highways a reality, however, the city must maintain, modernize and build port infrastructure, said Michael Stamatis, president and CEO of Red Hook Terminals, in a statement.<\/p>\n The \u201cBlue Highways\u201d initiative\u00a0isn\u2019t New York City\u2019s only response<\/a>\u00a0to proliferating e-commerce. The city also has a program that allows enrolled cargo bicycles to load and unload in certain zones, in a bid to get companies to use bicycles for local deliveries.<\/p>\n Read on<\/a><\/p>\n The post NYC wants a \u2018blue highway\u2019 on its waterways (SmartCitiesDive)<\/a> appeared first on London Reconnections<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To leverage its long coastline for delivery and get polluting trucks off the streets, the city is looking to the private sector for ideas. Listen to the article3 min Dive Brief New York City wants to\u00a0turn its waterways into \u201cblue highways\u201d\u00a0for delivering goods, announcing last week that it\u2019s on the hunt for creative ideas from the private sector on how…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-camcab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/camcab.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Dive Insight<\/h3>\n