The city needs more infrastructure designed with delivery drivers in mind, says one local service provider, and it would not be difficult to implement.
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The city needs more infrastructure designed with delivery drivers in mind, says one local service provider, and it would not be difficult to implement.
Earlier this week, Rob Woodbridge, co-founder and COO of Ottawa-based last-mile delivery platform Trexity, spoke on a panel about the future of urban mobility at the Ottawa Board of Trade’s Infrastructure Forum.
During the panel, he said both businesses and consumers face challenges delivering and receiving packages in the downtown core because of outdated infrastructure.
“It used to be that a big truck would pull up to a big bay and then it would ship to a store. That has completely shifted,” said Woodbridge. “Every single business in our community is its own warehouse, and instead of a pallet, it's a product that goes out in a car that's owned by a contractor independently trying to earn a living in the city of Ottawa.”
Trexity is one of many companies that send packages through the city’s core on a daily basis. According to Woodbridge, the company currently ships deliveries for 1,100 local businesses and contracts more than 1,000 drivers.
During the pandemic, he said more people started shopping primarily online and more small businesses turned to e-commerce. That trend hasn’t reversed, he said, but the city hasn’t adequately responded to changing needs.
“The infrastructure that was built for delivery — mailboxes, houses with mailboxes and pallets that are going to warehouses — has completely inverted, and we all know that,” he said. “We as a city put a lot of friction into the process.”
One issue plaguing ByWard Market businesses in particular is parking tickets, with merchants complaining that the lack of parking has resulted in fines that have forced some independent drivers to avoid the area altogether.
Without proper infrastructure for drivers, Woodbridge said couriers are often forced to park illegally to make deliveries on time, then end up paying the price.
The only alternative, he said, would be for both customers and businesses to deal with delays.
“Their entire day’s earnings have just been wiped out by one ticket in order to get the delivery to this customer,” he said. “It’s just one delivery that has an impact. If you do that 1,000 times or 10,000 times in a day, you are running into some serious challenges, like quality of service and brand deterioration for the merchants.”
Some cities have already introduced policy changes and infrastructure to address these challenges, Woodbridge said.
Washington, D.C., for example, designated delivery zones similar to bus stops in the street network, accounting for the number of merchants and volume of delivery requests in the area. Woodbridge said the move has helped contract drivers and gig workers who use delivery apps like Uber or Lyft.
"This isn't new, but it has such an impact on the quality of life and their earning ability and the merchants' ability to get their goods out,” he said.
Woodbridge added that, unlike large-scale infrastructure projects, these kinds of changes can be implemented quickly.
“These are the things that we can turn on in a day or a week that need a vote from council, not a building or a road,” he said.
He added that small businesses should be more involved in the city’s infrastructure decisions going forward to account for other challenges that impact them.
“What we do in the city is we decide and then we tell the BIAs after,” he said. “But most cities in the U.S. that are forward-thinking are involving their business community in those decisions and then they're accommodating it. You need to make it frictionless for them to do business, for them to reach their customers. Delivery is just one piece of facilitating that, but it's going to be a more and more important piece.”
