Delivered In A Cube, On A Bike?

Fresh greens delivered on a cargo bicycle.

It's not one of those "Only in Portland" or "Only in Williamsburg" fever-dreams.  Yesterday, it became a reality--well, sort of, and for a few people and businesses--in Midtown and Downtown Manhattan.

 UPS, Amazon and DHL entered a Commercial Cargo Bike Pilot Program, in which deliveries are made on bikes with large containers attached to their rears.  DHL is already using such "Cubicycles" in Europe. New York City's Department of Transportation is collecting data on the ones launched yesterday and the DOT's commissioner, Polly Trachtenberg said the project is intended to make deliveries "safer and greener" by using those bikes instead of trucks.

A UPS cargo bike in Seattle.

The "greener" part seems obvious.  As for safety, Trachtenberg noted that a disproportionate number of the city's  cycling fatalities--11 of 27 to date this year--involved trucks.

Traffic congestion and its effects have long been problems in New York City.  In recent years, however, they have grown worse.  The level of fine particle pollution in the Big Apple's air actually declined, slowly but steadily, for a decade until 2015.  Since then, the levels of those pollutants, and others, have increased.  Most of that deterioration in the city's air quality has been blamed on two factors:  for-hire car services like Uber and Lyft, and the increasing popularity of package deliveries from Amazon and other retailers. 

DHL "Cube bike" in Berlin

It would be great if hundreds, or even thousands, of trucks could be replaced by cargo bikes.  Could some of those containers could be fitted to accommodate passengers?

Is Amazon Sending UPS Back To Its Roots?

I could've been....a UPS delivery person.

Actually, I was, for about four weeks.  The venerable delivery company hired me one holiday season:  from the day after Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve.  Back then, the company employed a lot of "helpers" during that time of year.  Many of us were students, as I was.  We didn't drive:  We rode the trucks for a minute or two, leaped off, delivered a few packages, leaped back on and repeated a few hundred times.

I don't know whether UPS still hires extra help during that season.  The pay, as I recall, was decent, but as my driver said, "You earn it."  He was right:  Even though I was young and in good condition (mainly from cycling), I was still tired at the end of a shift:  I'd have just enough energy to ride my bike home.  But it was, in some ways, a satisfying job, at least for those few weeks:  People were usually happy to see us, and I got a few tips and gifts.

That driver, and our supervisor, suggested that I might want to get a driver's license and work for them permanently.  Sometimes I wonder whether I should have:  I understand the retirement benefits are good, and I could have retired by now.  Then again, even if I had more desire to drive at all, I'm not sure that I would have wanted to do it all day.

If I'd been born a few decades earlier, I could have been a bike messenger for them.  After all, I later plied the streets of Manhattan on two wheels, delivering everything from slices of pizza to documents pertaining to mergers, divorces and every other proceeding you can think of--and a few small packages with mysterious contents. (Well, at least I wasn't supposed to know what was in them. But, given their destinations, it wasn't hard to tell.)  And UPS was in the bike messenger business.

In fact, that's how it started more than a century ago:  a few young men delivered packages by bicycle and on foot in Seattle.  Now, it seems that UPS is returning to its roots, sort of.

It's partnered with the Seattle Department of Transportation and the University of Washington in a pilot program to make deliveries in the city's downtown area, around the Pike Place Market.  The program will involve e-bikes pulling wagons with detachable cargo trailers.  Those vehicles remind me a bit of the tuk-tuks I rode while in Cambodia and Laos. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the designers were inspired, at least in part, by them:  these containers can carry up to 400 pounds, and four adult humans (of Western size) can ride in the cab of a tuk-tuk.

According to Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, the alliance will "help us better understand how we can ensure the delivery of goods while making space on our streets for transit, bikes and pedestrians."  Seattle, like other American cities, has experienced an increase in motorized traffic in spite of growing numbers of cyclists, pedestrians and people who use mass transit.  

While UPS and other couriers (including the US Postal Service and Fed Ex) can't be blamed for it, one could say they are vehicles (no pun intended) for it:  According to a report from the World Economic Forum and Deloitte, in the decade from 2005 to 2015, the global total number of parcels delivered increased by 128 percent.  Much of this increase, according to researchers, is a result of consumers increasingly having single items shipped at a time.  This trend has been fueled, in large part, by retailers like Amazon and Walmart--who use UPS and the other carriers I've mentioned--who make it easy to order, and offer free shipping on, cheap items.   

If the collaboration between the UPS, the city and the university proves successful, UPS says it will be expanded to other parts of the Emerald City.  It could also be exported to other cities experiencing traffic congestion problems.

This Santa Claus Is A Rider

People of, ahem, a certain age remember Gene Autry as "The Singing Cowboy."  People of my generation know him best for singing "Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer."

He brought pleasure to many of us.  I can't comment on how much he actually knew about riding herd where the buffaloes roam. However much he knew, I hope it was more than Sylvester Stallone, a.k.a. Rambo, knows about soldiering.

On the other hand, I can say, with some certainty, that he didn't know much about road safety or optics.  After all, a red headlight is illegal in most places.  It also isn't very effective--or, at least, not as effective as a white or yellow light--for seeing ahead.

To be fair, it's not Autry's fault for miseducating, if inadvertently, a couple of generations of young people.  The guilty party is actually Johnny Marks, who wrote the song.

I got to thinking about all of this after reading a news story about a "Santa" who delivers Christmas trees on his bicycle:

On Clarendon Street in Boston, en route to Copley Square

He seems to have been born for the job in more ways than one:  His real name is Jimmy Rider, and he hauls balsam firs  in a custom-made trailer through Boston-area streets at this time of year. 

"Every person is happy to get a tree," says Rider, who operates his side business "EverGreen Delivery" out of Ricky's Flower Market in Somerville, Massachusetts.  But, as with stand-up comedy, it's not just about the material:  The delivery matters.  "He does it with such enthusiasm, whether it's snowing or raining, or early in the morning."  says proprietor Ricky DiGiovanni, who supplies the trees.   "He'll even do it late in the evening.  He gets the job done, and he does it with a smile.

During the rest of the year, Rider's main business is delivering goods from farmer's markets and restaurants on his bike.  Somehow I imagine he brings good cheer all year round--and that he knows enough not to use a red light in front.
 

This Young Man Delivers

Three decades have passed since I was a bike messenger in Manhattan.   As far as I know, none of the other messengers I knew from those days is still "in the business" in any capacity, not even as a dispatcher or owner of a courier company.

Still, I feel a certain kinship with anyone who makes deliveries on a bicycle (though not on e-bikes or motor scooters!).  I was a messenger, in part, because at that time in my life, I couldn't have worked in an office or any other place with four walls, and I couldn't deal with any other human being--with one or two exceptions--for more than a few minutes at a time.  

Also, even though I was quickly forgotten when I stopped making deliveries--after all, it wasn't hard to replace me--I still sometimes feel as if no work I've done since those days was as vital.  Or, at least, the absence of anything I've done since then wouldn't be noticed as much as my failure to deliver the blueprints, letters, packages and lunches(!) I brought to offices, businesses and, on occasion, people's homes.

Even so, I never did anything as important as Sizwe Nzima has been doing for the past four years.

He was waiting--and waiting--on line for his grandparents' HIV medication.  They couldn't get to the Cape Town, South Africa clinic where the medicine was dispensed, so Sizwe--who was still a high school student--made frequent trips there.  He realized that others who were waiting with him on line had similar stories, or were themselves people who arrived only after great difficulty.  They usually came, as Nzima did, from the city's low-income townships, far from the center. 

Poverty and unemployment are rampant in those areas.  Most of the residents are black.  Nzima found out that while many companies delivered medications to people's homes, none went to the impoverished communities like the one in which his grandparents lived.  The companies told him they weren't acting out of prejudice:  They simply couldn't find the homes--wooden and metal shacks--because they don't show up on Google or other search engines.

Sizwe Nizma (r) and one of his employees deliver medicines in a Cape Town neighborhood.

Only someone with local knowledge could navigate the area.  Nzima has that.  While sitting on a hard wooden bench at the clinic, he realized he could use that knowledge to deliver HIV medicine to those houses the companies' maps and electronic devices couldn't find.

After a while, he branched out and started bringing people medications for other chronic illnesses, such as diabetes and epilepsy.  From having two customers--his grandparents--four years ago, he and his staff of six riders (some of whom work full-time) now serve 930 clients.

Now his business may branch out again:  an international shipping company wants to start delivery to Cape Town's urban townships. They, like the companies he contacted four years ago, can't find the houses.  Therefore, they need someone with local knowledge, and have contacted him.  They want him and his crew to do the work.

Not bad for a 23-year-old, eh?

Through The Snow

By now, I'm sure that you've heard about the snowstorms that blew through this part of the world.   Where I live, in Astoria, the official snowfall total was seven inches (about 18 cm), about the same as what was recorded just across the river in Central Park.  Other nearby locales had a foot (about 30 cm).  

While these nebular accumulations are not exceptional, they are the most we've had in some time. What made this storm particularly harsh were the gale-force winds, which helped to drive the temperature to the lowest level (3F or -16C) we've had in three years.  So, it's not surprising that almost nobody was outside until this morning.  In fact, the only people I saw on bikes were delivering restaurant meals.

Somehow I found myself thinking about people who take multiyear or trans-global bike tours.  Surely they must encounter conditions like these somewhere along the way. Perhaps their bikes end up looking, at least for a while, like this:

From 360 Niseko

 

Not A Hipster Fixie

I know that I've ranted and railed against "hipster fixies," espcially their garish color schemes (if, indeed, they can be called "schemes).  However, I rather liked this bike, which I saw on my way to work today:

For one thing, it cannot be properly considered a "hipster fixie."  It is indeed a fixie, but its frame is from a department-store mountain bike.  Plus, the bike is used for  restaurant deliveries.  Finally, the man who rides it is anything but a hipster:  He's a Salvadorean immigrant who was happy that I took the photo. 

I complimented the color scheme--which he did himself:  al frente, la rueda roja con la llanta amarilla; y, a trasera, al reves.  He complimented my Spanish, which makes him a truly nice man. (Really!)

Just for the sake of contrast, I propped Vera in the same spot after he left with the non-hipster fixie:

For Someone Who Has To Ride In The Snow

Today the temperature hovered a few degrees below freezing.  But snow fell; about four inches stuck to the sidewalks and streets.  Even after the snow stopped, the dampness in the air seeped through everything, it seemed, and made it seem even colder.


I didn't ride today because when I did my laundry and some grocery shopping, I noticed a lot of "black ice."  I don't have a pair of studded tires, and I'm not even sure that they would have helped.  Plus, Max, my surviving cat, wanted to spend some quality time with me.  (Yes, he reads all of the self-help and pop-psychology books.;-))


Plus,I didn't see anyone cycling today, and I didn't see any bikes that looked particularly forlorn, pristine or striking in any other way when parked in the snow.  I'd have liked to get a shot of one of the restaurant delivery guys who was carrying General Tso's Chicken and Hot and Sour soup in bags that dangled from the bars of a '90's mountain bike--a Trek, I think--cobbled together with parts from other bikes and stuff that was never meant for bikes.  


I couldn't help but to think of my own days as a messenger.  I didn't have any cats back then; in fact, I didn't have a regular address:  I was living in sublets.  I'll bet that delivery guy is living in a similar way.  Or, perhaps, he's living in a room with four or five other guys.  They might all be making deliveries, too, for other Chinese restaurants, pizzerias, diners and any other kind of place that sells food for people who can't or don't want to prepare it themselves. 


I once delivered pizza when I was a messenger. Two slices with sausage, pepperoni, peppers and onions to an office on the 89th floor of One  World Trade Center (the NorthTower).  Those two slices cost 3.50; the guy who ordered them (or, more precisely, his office)  paid six dollars to the company I worked for. I got about half of that as my commission, and the guy gave me a five-dollar tip.  In those days, that got me a couple of drinks or smokes.  And the man was clearly happy to get his pizza within five minutes of ordering it; the pizzeria's delivery system would have taken at least half an hour.  Plus, I think those two slices weren't enough to make the minimum for a delivery order.


The guy I saw today had to have been delivering an order of at least ten dollars.  That's the minimum at the restaurant for which he works:  Fatima's Halal Kitchen, a Chinese restaurant in my neighborhood.  Their food is excellent; you just won't find ribs or pork there. (Here's a slogan for them:  Making Hungry Muslims Happy.)  On the other hand, they make some really good vegetarian dishes.


Anyway, he has to ride over slush and black ice, which is even more dangerous than rain, snow, sleet or hail.  I wonder whether he'll recall or relive days like this.  Or maybe he'll forget them altogether.  If he does, he probably won't be riding a bike, either.