I signed up to drive for DoorDash. Now I know why food delivery causes traffic chaos. - The Boston Globe (2024)

But it wasn’t until I became a DoorDash delivery driver last month that I really came to understand the nature of the problem — and some solutions that might work.

Food delivery boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic, and its growth hasn’t slowed. DoorDash says it handled 20 percent more orders in the first quarter of this year than in the same period of 2023. A 2022 report by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council, the planning agency for Greater Boston, found that in 2021, more than 80 million deliveries took place in Massachusetts using services like GrubHub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats. That meant food delivery accounted for more trips than ride-hailing using Lyft and similar apps. And, the council noted, the pickup and drop-off times required for food deliveries are typically much longer than for shuttling passengers around.

DoorDash is the dominant player in the United States, with about two-thirds of the market for food delivery. I was surprised to see how easy it was to become a delivery driver — a “Dasher” — using my phone. DoorDash asked for enough information to run a background check on me, but it didn’t request details about my car insurance, and while going through the onboarding process, I only briefly saw a message advising me to “always abide by your local traffic and parking laws.” (The services generally say that couriers are expected to carry insurance as required by state law and produce proof of insurance when requested.)

I decided my goal as a Dasher would be to try to park legally all the time. It was easy in places where restaurants had their own lots and on Sundays, when both metered spaces and resident parking spots were available. Even where restaurants had free parking, though, I observed other delivery drivers double-parking in the street because it was quicker than pulling into a spot in the lot. Once you accept a delivery run, the app sets a target time for both pickup and drop-off — sometimes unrealistic, based on traffic and distance — and you are acutely aware that circling the block once or twice to search for a legal spot can cause you to miss those targets. (My rating in the app for being on time or early: 91 percent.)

I also observed that some customers place an order that requires stops at two different restaurants — such as a beverage from one and a meal from another — causing double the blockages with a single click of that “Order” button.

On one Sunday night delivery run starting in Allston, I found a legal metered spot to get out of the traffic flow and counted eight cars double-parked, along with two scooters and a car lingering at a stop for the MBTA’s Route 66 bus. (This particular bus stop is in front of a popular Five Guys burger shop.) As someone who often cycles around town in good weather, every time I encounter a car double-parked in the bike lane — especially at night — I feel as if the driver is unthinkingly trading my life expectancy for their convenience.

And the scooters! If you were trying to make the most money delivering food with the smallest outlay, you’d purchase an inexpensive motorized scooter — likely gas-powered — for $1,000 and not bother registering it with the RMV, because regulations are opaque and no one seems to verify the top speed or engine size of the plateless vehicles doing food delivery around the city. You might also not buy insurance, because the apps don’t check that you have it when you sign up. Good luck tracking down a scooter driver who knocked you down on a Boylston Street sidewalk if the vehicle doesn’t have license plates.

I watched scooter drivers using bike lanes at high speeds — sometimes against the flow of traffic — and navigating sidewalks so they could park just outside the door of a restaurant. All the delivery apps treat drivers as independent contractors, so if there’s an accident, the companies are not liable for any injuries or damage.

What the city can do

Boston city officials are seeing what we’ve all been seeing. “I watched somebody doing food delivery on an electric unicycle — going the wrong way,” says Jascha Franklin-Hodge, chief of streets for the City of Boston.

But while Boston has been adding short-term parking meters in parts of the Back Bay, as well as creating new loading zones and scooter parking spots in restaurant-heavy neighborhoods, Franklin-Hodge knows the problem is not yet solved.

There are three outstanding issues, he says: The city doesn’t get data from the companies about where pickups and drop-offs are happening. It has no channel of communication to report unsafe behavior by the couriers to the delivery companies. And there is no fee to help towns and cities manage the traffic the companies have created, as there is with Uber and Lyft (which the state charges 20 cents per ride.)

Before the city or state chooses to implement a new fee, here are several things it should try:

• Adding loading zone spots on busy restaurant blocks, ideally with additional signage on the post to make it clear that these spots are open and free for food delivery drivers.

• Sharing these and other loading locations with the delivery app companies, which can then direct drivers to the closest loading zone as part of their navigation service.

• Reminding drivers in the app that they should use loading zones, parking meters, and free restaurant lots when available.

• Once there are more delivery loading zones, instructing meter readers and police to give more warnings and tickets to drivers who are not using the zones. (In Boston, the ticket for parking in a bike lane is $100.)

• Threatening a potential statewide delivery surcharge, similar to the Uber and Lyft fees, as a stick to get the app operators to take the issue of blocked bike and bus lanes seriously.

I asked Henry Grabar to weigh in. He is the author of “Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World,” and he’s currently living in Cambridge for a fellowship at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Grabar says he regularly bikes around the city and is forced to veer around delivery vehicles blocking the bike lanes.

Have any other cities eliminated the problem? “No, in a word,” Grabar says. “But this is a problem of the last 10 years, as we’ve watched the explosion in delivery, not to mention Uber and Lyft.” Addressing it, he says, “is a work in progress” for big cities around the world.

For now, I’ve decided to stop Dashing — total earnings, $88.06. I’m also thinking twice before I hit the “Order” button: Should I cook instead, or perhaps walk to a restaurant and do my own pickup?

Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com. Follow him @ScottKirsner.