Dec 12
Interested in cutting down on your driving time? It’s easy. Avoid left turns. At least that’s what UPS is doing.
according to Heather Robinson, a U.P.S. spokeswoman, the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons. So what can Brown do for you? We can’t speak to how good or bad they are in the parcel-delivery world, but they won’t be clogging up the left-hand lane while they do their business.
Technorati Tags: economics, environment, software development
Wow!
Is the software going to be available to other companies?
What does 28.5 million miles represent as a percentage of their annual mileage.
Be great if Google maps picked it up and ran with this…
That’s really incredible. Maybe not as practical for people, but avoiding idling is a good idea – I wonder when GPS’ will be intelligent enough to adjust driving routes intuitively based on this.
For years I have used routes that avoid dangerous left- hand turns or tried to map out a route that uses intersections with green arrows. I do this for safety more than for gas savings, however. Left turns– especially on busy roads are extremely dangerous as well as inconvenient.
I imagine trying to map out routes by hand would be a major pain. Lowell, you should get a GPS