NYC's Blue Highways moves parcels by passenger ferry and cargo bike, not truck

In a March 2026 New Yorker piece, Henry Alford describes Blue Highways, a pilot launched by the city's Department of Transportation. Up to 800 parcels a day travel from Brooklyn to Manhattan by boat and then cargo bike, instead of by truck. The piece notes that nearly 90 percent of the 2.5 million packages New Yorkers receive each day are delivered by truck.

Alford follows one Sephora box. It reached the Red Hook waterfront terminal of Dutch X, a next-day delivery service, at about 3 A.M. By 10 A.M. it was in one of nine Kevlar totes, roughly 200 parcels in all, wheeled on steel-cage dollies onto a small passenger ferry. The ride to Pier 79 on Manhattan's West Side took 23 minutes.

There a Dutch X biker received the coordinates for his 45 parcels through the FarEye app and loaded them into the trailer of a pedal-assist e-bike with a windshield and roof. He estimated about six hours for the round. The D.O.T. estimates two cargo bikes can do the work of one van or box truck.

Use the water the city already has: load parcels onto a regular passenger ferry and finish the trip on cargo bikes.

The ferry crosses the river while trucks sit in tunnel and avenue traffic.

Totes on dollies let staff roll a whole load aboard without special equipment.

A bike can reach the doors of dense blocks where trucks idle at the curb.

A phone app hands the biker the delivery coordinates instantly.

Congested networks often have an idle one beside them; a short hop on it can replace the worst leg of the old route.

The New Yorker reports only that this was a new pilot; it gives no measured emissions or cost results. Alford's follow-along ended with the Sephora box being left at the front desk of a Midtown building where Amazon parcels were already stacked three high.