To reduce traffic, pollution, delivery services hop on the bike

It’s back to the future for UPS (NYSE: UPS), a company that started in Seattle as a modest bike and pedestrian courier more than a century ago before becoming a global player serving 220 countries and territories.

On Monday, November 5th, UPS returns to its pedal power origins with a year-long pilot project that will make deliveries using electric-assist cargo bikes in downtown Seattle. 

The Seattle Department of Transportation and the University of Washington’s Urban Freight Lab, an initiative that brings together city planners, retailers and freight companies, have partnered on the project to track the pilot’s impact on traffic and pollution. Depending on the outcome, UPS will expand the service to other parts of Seattle. 

 “UPS is very focused on urban logistics, and our ‘cycle logistics’ solutions, which the cargo e-bike is part of, are all designed to address congestion and pollution,” UPS spokesperson Glenn Zaccara said in an email. 

Traffic in cities is getting a lot worse as Amazon, WalMart and other retailers ramp up delivery services. The growth of e-commerce boosted global parcel volume by 48 percent from 2014-2016, according to Pitney Bowes’ Parcel Shipping Index. A report from the World Economic Forum and Deloitte attributed seven percent of the traffic in U.S. cities to delivery trucks.