Whether you're working from home and need to grab a sandwich during your lunchbreak, or having a weekend hangout and could use a pizza to feed your friends, food delivery apps have become an increasingly popular way to get meals straight to your door.
In Boston, though, these convenient services are causing serious headaches on the streets, officials and residents agree.
"This had started before the pandemic, but really accelerated during the pandemic and has continued," Boston's Chief of Streets Jascha Franklin-Hodge said during an interview with NBC10 Boston. "You just see a lot of chaos that results from this kind of activity."
Franklin-Hodge pointed to the double-parked cars and blocked bike and bus lanes as the "negative effects on public streets" from food delivery services around already-congested restaurant and business districts. Downtown Crossing, Newbury Street in Back Bay and Brighton Avenue in Allston are all areas seeing the issue.
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"The city is doing our best to try to tame this," Franklin-Hodge said. "It's challenging, in part because the whole industry of food delivery is completely unregulated in the state."
The main strategy that Franklin-Hodge discussed is a reevaluation of how curb space is being used around the city. The "default" use is generally two-hour parking, he said, but that may not be the best use depending on the area.
For restaurant-heavy sections of the city, a better use of curb space may be a pick-up area, leading the city to add loading zones. The approach is piece-by-piece, with an ongoing analysis of curb space by individual neighborhood.
"In some cases we might do it on a block — if we notice that there's a problem, we will send folks in to go in and just make some quick regulatory changes," Franklin-Hodge said. "In other cases, we do a neighborhood wide or business district wide analysis.
The city recently concluded an analysis in Roslindale Square, and has plans to assess parking plans at Cleary Square in Hyde Park and Fields Corner in Dorchester.
"We need to do a much more fine grained approach to understanding how each block functions and it differs based on who's on each block," Franklin-Hodge said.
Aside from that, the city is also working to educate food delivery services on rules and expectations.
Pilot programs are underway, too, to find alternatives to bulky cars for delivery. Boston Delivers is funded by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, and is deploying cargo bikes under its first phase of a pilot.
Franklin-Hodge also noted that a first-of-its-kind in Boston will be rolled out in June: a designated scooter loading zone. It'll be right near the Chic-fil-A in Back Bay.
At the end of the day, Franklin-Hodge is not frustrated with delivery drivers, noting that they are low-wage workers who receive little to no training. He did express frustration, though, toward food delivery companies for a business model that he says is focused on speed and not safety. He hopes the state legislature will put into place some form of regulation on the industry.
"Good regulation will hopefully create some incentives for the companies to take some responsibility for the impacts that they have on our streets and on our safety and, work with their driving workforce to, do a better job, to deliver good outcomes," he said.
NBC10 Boston reached out to Uber and DoorDash for comment.
“We’ve been working closely with Massachusetts officials, transportation advocates and other community stakeholders on these issues, and are eager to help identify solutions so everyone in Boston can continue to safely share the city’s streets," a DoorDash spokesperson said in a statement.
DoorDash said that safety is a top priority, and works with its Dashers to help them navigate congested streets.
