Urban Freight Lab

At Seattle’s Pike Place Market pedestrians, residents, workers, deliveries, emergency access, and business activity all share a small, highly active civic space. The Urban Freight Lab has been working alongside partners as the Market continues a pilot to reduce vehicle access in its core streets for a second summer.

The Seattle Times shows what this looks like in practice, where many different needs are happening in the same few blocks, often at the same time. We’ve seen indications of reduced nonessential vehicle traffic, while delivery access and day-to-day activity continue. As this work moves forward, we’re focused on how people move through the Market and how those lived experiences connect to how the space operates.

Thanks to The Seattle Times for the reporting, and to the Pike Place Market PDA, Seattle Department of Transportation, Market businesses, residents, and community partners who are engaged in this work.

Pike Place Market’s car experiment may be confusing. Here’s what’s happening Strategically placed flower plants and 700-pound barriers will keep vehicles out of the Market through the summer and during the World Cup.

Mutual aid is about community: neighbors building networks that are responsive, hyperlocal, and rooted in trust.

Across Seattle, micro-pantries are part of the city's community care infrastructure. They are created organically by volunteers, community groups, and neighbors responding directly to local needs. Because they are built through relationships, local coordination, and hyperlocal support, they are typically easier to access through word of mouth and community connection rather than centralized systems or formal directories.

That’s part of what makes them harder to find in practice, and what inspired our new Urban Freight Lab project, funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) and focused on improving how community food access points are identified and navigated, while supporting the organizations and volunteers who sustain them.

Thanks to KUOW Public Radio for highlighting our work and the broader effort to make Seattle’s grassroots food pantries easier to discover and navigate.

Seattle’s grassroots food pantries just got easier to find You can find little free food pantries all around Seattle neighborhoods. They’re a great place to stock up on a few things or to donate ingredients to a neighbor. Researchers at the University of Washington just launched an app to help people find and fill the pantries. They’re hoping to reduce ...

Pike Place Market is one of Seattle’s most active shared civic spaces, where visitors, residents, workers, deliveries, and emergency access all intersect in a small footprint.

As street access in the Market continues to evolve, those shifts are shaping how the space functions day to day. To better understand those patterns, the Urban Freight Lab is partnering on a short, anonymous visitor experience survey focusing on how people are accessing the Market and how recent changes are shaping mobility and use patterns.

If you’ve been to Pike Place Market recently, your perspective matters. Take the survey: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdfD0-__YWyyaDoS941zKs81bGxovMpBSakQGSCAAO-P8Qslw/viewform

Thank you to everyone contributing their time and perspective to help inform how this space continues to evolve for the people who rely on it every day.

Pike Place Market Visitor Survey Thank you for participating in the Pike Place Market Visitor Survey! This survey of Pike Place Market visitors is being conducted by the University of Washington's Urban Freight Lab (UFL) on behalf of the Pike Place Market Preservation & Development Authority. The intent of the survey is to provide....

Little free pantries: simple idea, mutual aid system, and urban logistics question.

Seattle's growing network of micropantries and community fridges runs on neighbors sharing food with each other, and raises practical questions about coordination, visibility, food safety, and keeping pantries stocked as demand changes.

Axios published a story today about our PantryMap.org, part of our National Science Foundation (NSF) CIVIC Micro-Pantry project exploring these questions through mapping, real-time updates, and sensors that track activity, temperature, and shelf weight. Our team is looking at how the system works in practice, across individual pantry sites and the network as a whole.

Read the story:
https://www.axios.com/local/seattle/2026/05/12/little-free-pantries-seattle-donations-tracking-university-washington

Grateful to our partners Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, Ridwell, University District Food Bank, Cascade Bicycle Club, Washington State Department of Health, University of Washington School of Public Health

UW maps and tracks Seattle's Little Free Pantries A new University of Washington project lets Seattle residents track pantry donations and needs.

We’re excited to see our research exploring how technology can support Seattle’s growing network of micropantries and community fridges featured in UW News today.

The story highlights PantryMap.org, developed by our research team to connect neighbors to little free pantries across the region through real-time updates, activity feeds, pantry wish lists, and stock-level reporting. The project also explores how sensor technology can provide researchers with better insights into food distribution, reduce food waste, and strengthen mutual aid systems while preserving user privacy.

Led by the Urban Freight Lab and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through the CIVIC Innovation Challenge program, this interdisciplinary effort brings together expertise from across the University of Washington — Global Innovation Exchange - GIX, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health — along with community partners Ridwell, Sustainable Connections, University District Food Bank, Cascade Bicycle Club, and Washington State Department of Health.

“We’re trying to measure and quantify goodwill," said Senior Research Scientist and Co-PI Giacomo Dalla Chiara.

At the Urban Freight Lab, we’re proud to support research that combines innovation, logistics, and community collaboration to address complex urban sustainability and accessibility challenges in Seattle and beyond.

Read the full story:
https://www.washington.edu/news/2026/05/08/little-free-pantry-micropantry-community-fridge-pilot-app/

Cascade Bicycle Club’s Pedaling Relief Project (PRP) is expanding into Bellevue through a new partnership with Hopelink Bellevue Market.

At the Urban Freight Lab, we study how systems like this operate in real city conditions. Launched in 2020 in response to increased demand at food banks, PRP organizes volunteers using bicycles and electric cargo bikes to redistribute surplus food from grocery stores and farmers markets to food banks, little free pantries, and directly to people in need. Since then, volunteers have moved more than 1.7 million pounds of food and goods, reducing waste, traffic congestion, air pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions by replacing vehicle trips with bike-based delivery.

Great to see a friend of the Lab growing in scope and reach!

Read more:

Cascade’s Food Rescue Rides Expand to Bellevue | Cascade Bicycle Club Cascade’s Pedaling Relief Project is expanding to Bellevue thanks to a new partnership with Hopelink Bellevue Market.Pedaling Relief Project is a national model for cities seeking to reduce waste, traffic congestion and climate pollution.

City of Seattle Government is set to host matches for the FIFA World Cup 26™ this summer, and planning is underway that is already shaping how people and vehicles move through some of the city's busiest public spaces.

KING 5 highlights how Pike Place Market is part of those conversations, as the city considers how to balance pedestrian safety, business activity, and essential deliveries while managing vehicle access during major events. The Urban Freight Lab is working with Seattle Department of Transportation to better understand how delivery access and freight movement would function under planned access changes in and around Pike Place Market.

Rendering shows Pike Place Market barrier plan to restrict vehicles ahead of World Cup Pike Place Market is extending its pilot program limiting vehicle access. Leaders say it's helping them learn how to manage traffic year-round.

Looking ahead to Home Delivery World in Nashville next month.

Our Tom Maxner will be speaking on a panel on “Leveraging digital twins for smarter network planning,” bringing perspective from work happening on the ground to better understand and improve how delivery networks operate.

Digital twins are starting to show up more in how teams test ideas, understand tradeoffs, and make decisions about network design in practice.

If you’ll be there, be sure to catch the session.

THE EVENT for retail logistics | Home Delivery World 2026 FROM FREIGHT TO WAREHOUSE TO CONSUMER... THE EVENT FOR E-COMMERCE LOGISTICS

We gathered our members and partners last week for our quarterly meeting at the Seattle Public Utilities North Transfer Station. Huge thanks to SPU for hosting us and giving our group a chance to see the facility up close.

We spent the morning on site learning how waste and recycling are consolidated and transferred within Seattle, and about the people and work behind keeping everything moving day to day.

Radcliffe Dacanay (Seattle Department of Transportation), Karin Moughamer (Pike Place Market PDA), and our own Tom Maxner shared their work on deliveries in and around Pike Place Market, one of the most complex operating environments in Seattle, where coordination across people, timing, and constantly shifting constraints is essential to keeping things moving.

We also heard from Prof. Carla A. Tejada (University of Illinois Chicago), who shared research from the City Logistics Lab on how cities can better understand freight flows at scale.

We're appreciative of everyone who made time to join the conversation, and of our speakers for generously sharing their work and perspective.

There’s a lot of conversation right now about how cities should manage last-mile delivery, and what it means for congestion, emissions, and neighborhood streets.

Urban Freight Lab friend and member Mark Chiusano (Net Zero Logistics) recently published a City Limits opinion piece drawing on work happening on the ground in New York using foot couriers, e-bikes, and waterfront freight to move goods in ways that better match the scale of dense urban neighborhoods.

Always good to see perspectives like this shared, and to see practical work showing up in the broader conversations cities are having about urban freight.

Opinion: How Last-Mile Delivery Can Reduce NYC’s Congestion "The goal shouldn't be to freeze this industry in place. It should be to accelerate the transition already underway—more walkers, more e-bikes, more waterfront freight, more operators building career ladders from the ground