Getting to “yes” on accommodating the last-mile delivery facilities New Yorkers count on - by Jon Popin

New Yorkers love getting groceries, meals, and packages delivered straight to their door, or at least, to their doorman. The “last-mile delivery” facility’s trucks and vans are the linchpin that make that convenience possible? Maybe not quite so much.

Finding ways to best integrate those facilities and the traffic and other impacts they necessarily create is the goal of the “Last-Mile Facility Text Amendment” which has worked its way through the New York City Planning Department. The amendment is a proposed zoning change that would establish a City Planning Commission (CPC) Special Permit for new last-mile facilities and outline the terms and conditions they must meet to operate.

Simultaneously, the New York City Council’s Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection is now weighing the Delivery Protection Act (DPA), legislation that would require last-mile operators in the city to obtain an operating license. Licensing last-mile warehouses forces operators to disclose safety violations, traffic incidents, and emission impacts. The city can use these licenses to regulate neighborhood congestion and shut down chronically non-compliant facilities.

Additionally, the bill would require direct employment by last-mile companies of drivers delivering packages in the city. Under the current Delivery Service Partner (DSP) model, last-mile companies contract out their delivery operations to third-party vendors. DPA supporters say their bill would add needed legal and wage-theft protections for drivers and incentivize liability-conscious companies to upgrade training and safety and eliminate dangerous, algorithmically-driven, per-shift delivery quotas.

Backers of the text amendment and DPA share, as I see it, the same overarching goal: Ensuring that as Amazon, UPS, and others continue to expand their services to 8.6 million New Yorkers, their in-neighborhood facilities and oversight of drivers meet environmental, safety, and land-use standards. 

A study by the city comptroller indicates that vehicle accidents appear to be measurably higher within a half-mile radius of 18 major New York warehouse and distribution facilities. It’s a finding that could be a “correlation, not causation” reflection of where those facilities need to be located in relation to population density and major highways, and Amazon has publicly disputed these claims. Nonetheless, it has underlined, for many, the need for new regulation.

The Last-Mile Facility special permit text is an effort to define a set of commercial and manufacturing districts within which the city will, based on a number of factors, permit companies to create these unique delivery facilities. By definition, it’s also an exercise in deciding where in the five boroughs the city wants to keep out last-mile delivery facilities, for safety, environmental justice, and other considerations. 

Additionally, the city’s effort in placing oversight on last mile facilities through the introduction of a required special permit, especially in connection with the limitation of traffic and pollution generated from delivery trucks, aligns with New York City’s Economic Development Corp.’s and Department of Transportation’s interest in promoting a more sustainable freight network. That includes much greater use of “Blue Highways,” encouraging maximum waterborne movement of freight and packages via the East, Harlem, and Hudson Rivers and waterbodies like the Gowanus Canal and Newtown Creek. 

When it comes to negotiating a Last-Mile Facility zoning amendment that residents, businesses, delivery companies, pedestrians, bicyclists, and motorists can live with, the devil is, even more than usual, in the details. This is a process that requires thinking about many of New York’s 120,000 individual city blocks and asking: How close do residents here need, or want, a last-mile delivery facility to be? What will be the traffic and other impacts on this block of a new delivery facility? If this block is in a manufacturing district, how will a last-mile facility impact its industrial, commercial, and nearby residential neighbors?

Getting to yes on a Last-Mile Facility zoning amendment won’t be simple or easy. The concurrent debate over the need for and impact of the Driver Protection Act makes the negotiations even more complicated. But these are the kinds of big challenges New York has seen and met for centuries — all while remaining, in my modest opinion, the world’s best place to live, work, visit … and enjoy the amazing convenience of getting anything you need safely delivered right to your door.

Jon Popin is partner in Nutter’s Real Estate Department, Manhattan, N.Y.