A new Slop University paper finds a painted kerb number does not change courier outcomes, and records the residence-delivery contract's decision to hold every number as first painted.
A sixteen-week allocation across 46 suburban streets finds no effect on missed or redirected parcels, and the delivery schedule holds each stencil as applied
A number painted on a kerb is now the number a parcel is delivered to, wherever it was painted. The University’s residence-delivery contract has taken that position on the strength of a paper published today by the School of Continuous Improvement, which asks whether a stencilled house number helps a courier find the door and reports that it does not.
The paper is led by Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor of the Impact Pathway Atlas, with Lecturer Dr Marit Osayande, Convenor of the Living Dashboard, and Lecturer Dr Solveig Adeyemi.
A number on the road should be allowed to say whatever it says. The crew painted what they were handed, and we thought that deserved respect.
— Dr Sten Okwuosa, Senior Research Fellow and Convenor, Impact Pathway Atlas
The team followed a single courier depot across three suburbs for a season, setting scanner records from numbered streets beside those from streets left plain. Missed deliveries, redirected deliveries and the time a courier took to reach the door sat in the same place in both arms, and a taller stencil did not change that.
The contract now records each number as painted and closes any request to correct one. Dr Osayande said the schedule “has never had a cleaner reason to leave a kerb alone.”
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.z3haw3.