Filtering out the noise: the lessons learned from ‘quiet delivery’ trials

The results of the DfT-backed Quiet Deliveries Demonstration Scheme trials have provided a wealth of data on how goods can be delivered to retailers outside of normal business hours without excessive disruption to local communities… and also on when more flexible deliveries aren’t achievable, or even necessarily desirable.

Rik Thomas

01 July 2011

Chris Douglas, the TTR director responsible for co-ordinating the Quiet Deliveries Demonstration Scheme trials, says that the data obtained from the trials is to be made available to retailers and local authorities in the form of two ‘field guides’ synthesising best practice

A ‘Quiet Deliveries’ trial at the Superdrug shop at Marble Arch in central London was aborted at the last minute after senior Superdrug management decided that the existing arrangements actually made better business sense

When LTT last wrote about the Quiet Deliveries Demonstration Scheme the intention of project manager TTR (Transport and Travel Research) was to run six trials in the latter half of 2010 to investigate the extent to which it is possible to deliver goods to major retailers outside of ‘normal business’ hours without causing unacceptable noise disruption to local residents. Now, with the results of the four trials that eventually took place in, combined with data from two ‘trials...