Services

Overview

Don’t worry about how anything works for the moment but just imagine that you’re thinking of moving to a new house in an area with this new-fangled “localnet” service. You'd want to look carefully at the list of services the localnet is offering in that area. Not all areas will offer all services. In inner cities, for example, there might not be enough people growing vegetables to provide all of the “local market” services.

As we've walked through the impact of localnet on different individuals, we've come across many (but not all) of the services in action. In this section, the complete range of services is set out in a logical order. Each of the potential services is classified, described and evaluated so that, in subsequent chapters we can look at the design of the localnet system and see how it supports these services. When we then come to look at how to make it happen for real, we will inevitably have to pick and choose an initial set of services to implement. The discussions in this chapter will help us to assess the relative priorities of each.

This section discusses how each service in the rest of this chapter is to be:

Classifying

localnet services are divided into several categories - according to the role localnet plays in them. These categories are described below. You can click on any of the category headings or service names to see more details. These categories are:

Transport

localnet is designed to carry people as well as things. The delivery vans can carry passengers in space that is not filled with boxes. Some LocalHubs are linked by normal buses and trains but others rely on mixed vehicles that, again, can carry a mix of goods and people. Each area has a pool of electric cars that can be hired on an hourly or daily basis and that can also be driven to you by a member of staff acting as a taxi driver when needed.

End-to-end Delivery

These are services where the goods are collected, routed and delivered entirely within the localnet system. This is at its most efficient - and hence fastest and cheapest - within a single LocalHub's catchment area (a “local patch”) but can also be to neighbouring or connected localnets.

Distribution

These are services where goods are collected outside the localnet system and delivered to individual homes within it. The original source of the materials might be a dairy, the postal sorting office or an Amazon warehouse. The customer of localnet doesn't really care about this as all of these items are brought to his doorstep (or delivery hatch) by a small, friendly team that he knows well and trusts to look after his goods - and even his children.

Collection

These are services where localnet collects items from your home and then passes them on to other business - who may route them to onwards destinations (the post office for example) or who collect your items and use them (e.g. charity shops).

Storage

Sometimes, items are put into the localnet system to be kept there - either for a pre-determined time or until someone wants to ask for them back. Whether this is to improve the security of the items, to ensure they are kept at the right temperature and humidity or simply to free up space, a range of storage services is offered in most areas.

As we were Passing...

Some of the services provided are actually tasks that are carried out by the localnet staff who visit the premises and do not necessarily involve the transport of any goods or residents. Just making contact with a frail or vulnerable resident twice a day can be a valuable service.

Facilities

These are primarily provided at the LocalHub - which becomes the social and business centre of the area. Shops and other services will cluster around the hub even if they are not actually located inside it.

Describing

For each service, a brief definition of its scope is followed by details of how (if at all) this, or its rough equivalent is provided today. In all cases, we have attempted to address the following factors – with a global perspective as well as a more specific UK focus:

We then describe how it could – in fact should - look and feel within localnet – again, addressing the issues listed above. The text describes how the service works and references a number of terms such as “DeliveryPoint”, “LocalHub” and so on. These components of the localnet system are described in detail in the following Chapters and summarised in the Glossary. Hold your mouse over any such item to see the definition from the Glossary in a pop-up. Click the item to follow the link to the page where that item is described in more detail.

Evaluation

As localnet as a whole does not exist yet, we need to assess the desirability of implementing each service - and then see how well the planned set justifies (or not) the development of the concept as a whole. The benefits and, where they exist, the downsides of the new approach taken to each service are therefore reviewed and summarised in tabular form.

Criteria

Factors considered include:

Scoring

For each aspect, a score is given from 0 to 5 with positive scores indicating a net benefit to localnet and negative scores where the existing service it replaces is better. The scores represent the following:

Simply adding these up would be too simplistic to give a realistic overall rating as some aspects are much more significant than others. A suggested weighting scheme is discussed later.

Services