University Of Washington, Retail Partners Like Costco, UPS Unveil The Urban Freight Lab

The University of Washington is unveiling a new lab that will allow retailers (such as Costco and Nordstrom), delivery services (such as UPS), urban planners, commercial developers, logistic experts and other stakeholders to collaborate to, ideally, come up with the future of delivering goods in urban areas, according to GeekWire.

Called the Urban Freight Lab, the lab is run through the University of Washington’s Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics (SCTL) department, with UPS, Nordstrom and Costco as the founding industry members, while the City of Seattle plans to contribute $285,000 over the next three years toward the lab’s development.

The lab, which opened on Wednesday (Oct. 12), aims to improve the “last mile” of urban delivery, where truck drivers must typically traverse busy city streets, commercial vehicle loading zones and, oftentimes, privately owned buildings or facilities.

“The Urban Freight Lab at the UW SCTL Center is the place for companies working at the dead center of eCommerce in fast-growing cities to develop and ground test low-cost, promising solutions to delivering goods,” SCTL Director Anne Goodchild told GeekWire. “Urban Freight Lab membership benefits include delivery of new data-based knowledge and insights about the effects of several truck freight parking and freight-loading-bay action strategies proposed for implementation in the City of Seattle, before they are applied.”

At first, the University of Washington plans to limit membership to the lab to 12 companies from four sectors — the retail industry, urban truck freight carriers, tech companies and retail/mixed-use real estate developers. Membership will cost the companies $15,000 per year, according to GeekWire.

“We have more than 300 Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack stores — many in dense urban settings with a range of delivery settings, including common docks and unique situations,” Loren VandenBerghe, director of transportation at Nordstrom, said in a statement. “We are always interested in ways to better support our stores so we can better serve our customers. The SCTL’s efforts will be beneficial for us to glean some new best practices and actively participate in creating solutions so we can continue to do so.”