Rise in road traffic due to on-line trading rather than High Street Retail

Road traffic is up due to multi-drop van use

The way we shop is changing.

E-Commerce is big business these days because it is taking over from High Street retail shopping.

Who needs the faff of battling to get into a town and park and get out again when you can just order on-line? Why risk a parking ticket or the hassle? Indeed.

That's the reality today and why 15 retail shops on the High Streets of Britain close every day.

More goods are going on more vans as we change the way we buy

This change is bad news in a number of ways, firstly the traffic increase, emissions increase, it is also putting a big strain on delivery drivers often having to do more than 120 drops a day.

The Meridian driverless van for automated deliveries

Further bad news could be for the drivers of the vans. Our old friend robotics and automation is starting to make in-roads into their trade, firstly with the Amazon drone and now with driverless vans.

Is there an answer? Partly.

What we need is to move away from the instant gratification situation and move to area deliveries where packages can be sorted by area regardless of carrier and parcels allotted by area not carrier.

This will mean that we offset six vans going down one street and just have the one. Less traffic, is good.

The bad news is that the High Street is in a death by inches situation. Retail outlets are either going on-line or they are going onto business parks. Those that don't go bust or hang on until grim death in dwindling towns full of charity and coffee shops.

This is the future unless we cut our consumer cravings.