New Yorkers who don’t have a doorman or a friendly neighbor to sign off on will soon have a new option: sidewalk lockers for the public.
The electronic lockers, which city officials announced on Friday, will be free to use 24 hours a day. After the shipping company delivers a person’s package to the designated lockout location, the customer will receive a PIN or QR code to open the drawer for pickup. The lockers will be monitored by surveillance cameras to prevent theft.
Starting this summer, so-called smart lockers will be located in 15 unfinished locations around the city. GoLocker, a New York City company, will install and operate the devices under a year-long pilot program overseen by the Department of Transportation.
Package lockers – known as LockerNYCs – will be placed back off the curb, near buildings and placed on wider sidewalks to avoid obstructing pedestrian traffic, transportation officials said. Densely populated neighborhoods with older buildings, less likely to have secure mail rooms, will be prioritized.
Rows of modular steel lockers — available in white, gray or black — will be about 7 feet tall, 8 to 10 feet wide, and have an average of 53 compartments. The overhead canopy will shield the locker from sun and rain.
GoLocker will pay about $500,000 to install 15 locking locations on sidewalks and place 15 more inside retail stores. The company, which already operates indoor lockers around the city — including at laundromats, bagel shops and plant nurseries — plans to charge carriers for using the lockers.
The locker program is the city’s latest effort to address the growing number of delivery trucks clogging New York’s streets, especially in the wake of the online shopping boom caused by the pandemic. The increase in truck traffic has exacerbated congestion and air pollution, increased costs for businesses and made streets less safe for people, according to transport and cargo experts. pedestrians and cyclists.
City transportation officials have significantly expanded loading zones and are creating mini hubs in the vicinity where packages can be unloaded from trucks onto freight bikes. and handcarts. The new sidewalk lockers will create a network of centralized delivery locations for packages, allowing for fewer truck stops instead of having to go door-to-door.
“The LockerNYC initiative will help reduce the number of delivery truck trips made each day while providing a safe place for New Yorkers to pick up,” said Ydanis Rodriguez, the city’s transportation commissioner. packages.
While parcel lockers are not new, they are often used by private companies like Amazon and carriers to service their own customers. But more and more shared public lockers are springing up in cities like London, Paris and Tokyo as a more efficient, more sustainable alternative for home delivery.
A locker operator, quadrant, there are thousands of changing points at transit stations, supermarkets, pharmacies and other public spaces. The company has 7,000 locations in Japan, 4,500 of which are in Tokyo. The company has a total of 1,500 public key points in France and the UK and is adding 5,000 more in the UK.
“We wanted to make it so easy to pick up or drop packages from the lockers that you can choose,” said Gary Winter, vice president of Parcel Pending by Quadient, the company’s locker solutions group. it even home delivery.
Mr. Winter adds that the company’s lockers have been proven to withstand vandalism, rain and even tornadoes.
As public lockers increase, one challenge is finding a place for them on crowded sidewalks.
After Amazon delivery lockers are placed on sidewalks in Chicago parks in 2021, residents complain that the unit was ugly and blocked foot traffic. Some lockers later REMOVE. There are currently 25 locker locations that handle 4,000 to 7,000 packages per month, according to the Chicago Park District.
Pedestrians in New York had to overcome a number of obstacles, including a new curb compost bin, 5G . antenna mast And electric car charger.
“All these new technologies are sidewalk-based and you need space for them,” said José Holguín-Veras, engineering professor and director of the University’s Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Transport Systems. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute said.
But Sarah Kaufman, interim executive director of New York University’s Rudin Transportation Center, said parcel lockers will not only speed up the delivery process for shipping companies and their customers. but also free up parking spots and double the number of delivery trucks.
“It’s really a fun way to reduce congestion and make it easier for traffic to move,” she said.
