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Urban Design Observations: Improvised Moving-Van-to-Sidewalk Interface

By Rain Noe - May 7, 2018

in Urbanism

Someone is moving house, and this moving truck is parked at a skewed angle to the curb.

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The movers I observed were rolling a series of boxes and items up this ramp with a dolly. It's obviously made easier if they don't need to deal with the curb.

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But by parking at such an angle to the curb, it means they blocked more of the roadway. This wasn't a huge deal, but oncoming cars had to navigate this chokepoint.

The design of this ramp works fine in the 'burbs where they have driveways, but it's ill-suited for the urban environment. Ideally they'd have a different ramp that had the top slanted at an angle, and would be reversible. That way you could flip it over to change from a right-side sidewalk to a left-side sidewalk.

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Or do one of you have an idea for how to make one ramp do all three positions? Bear in mind that it's got to be super-strong, so any kind of hinge is going to present a problem.

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Carl Leiby

6 years ago

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It seems to me you'd be better off changing the truck than the ramp. Presumably the ramp hooks onto the back of the truck with some kind of mechanism. I don't think it would be hard to weld up an adapter that hooked onto the truck all the way across the back and provided 3 anchor points for the ramp at different angles. In the center the ramp should anchor straight out and on the sides at some slight angle.
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Kyle Wolfe

6 years ago

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Couldn't the back of the truck be faceted so that it is flat in the middle and angle back on either end? That way you could position the ramp in either of the 3 positions?

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Z Hulett

6 years ago

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Why couldn't they just put the ramp straight out onto the street and use a second smaller ramp specially designed to fit onto a curb?

Or, they could have the sides of the truck open up, so there would be three doors, one on each face of the truck. If the truck is loaded properly, the heaviest items should be closest to the cab. That means the items that would block the side doors should be fairly lightweight and can be unloaded through the traditional backdoor into the street and then lifted onto the curb easily. Once those items have been untied from the sides and offloaded, the side doors could be opened and the ramp moved to the side to allow offloading directly onto the street.

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- Dave Eyvazzadeh
  
  Z Hulett
  
  6 years ago
  
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  Interesting idea with the side door. The challenge is the pitch of the ramp as the side-opening would result in a steep pitch. So how do you address this without a complete redesign of the truck to relocate/eliminate the standard tube steel of the frame? Or perhaps it is time to redesign it.
  
  As for the ramp — I'm thinking if you make the ramp with an angled deck on the truck side vs the standard rectangular, it can mount to the truck without additional decking necessary to take up the angled gap. Make it invertable so you can flip it over for off-loading to the opposite curb. But how do you manage a straight offload without needing a second ramp?
  
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