Potential Amazon Drone Deliveries

By Adam Swift

With Revere serving as a hub of Amazon activity in the northeast, Ward 6 Councillor Richard Serino wants to make sure the city is prepared if the online retail giant begins making drone deliveries in the region.

At last week’s council meeting, Serino introduced a motion asking the city to look into regulating potential future drone deliveries to the best of its legal ability.

“A resident .. sent me a news article about Amazon in Texas and California starting a pilot program with delivery via drones,” said Serino. “Where we have an Amazon warehouse coming online in Ward 6, and the one on the American Legion Highway, I just wanted to get ahead of this.”

Serino said that while drone use for deliveries would be heavily regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration and state regulations, he said he would like to have the city solicitor to look at what oversight the city might have concerning future drone deliveries.

Serino said he was not advocating for drone use, only that he wanted to make sure the city is prepared for the possibility.

“It’s not going to be something at the municipal level that you can outright ban, but we can, through zoning or ordinances, control where things are delivered or where they land.”

Council President Patrick Keefe noted that Revere is in the Logan Airport flight path, and there are very strict flight regulations.

“I know there are some people using drones for photography, and they can’t fly drones in many areas of Revere, and there is only a certain height they can hit,” said Keefe.

Given the amount of traffic created by Amazon delivery trucks, Keefe said it might not be a bad idea to have some kind of drone use for deliveries to get more traffic off the streets.

“Do you know how many packages are delivered in Revere?” asked Councillor-at-Large Dan Rizzo. “We’re going to look like the Ukraine with all these packages flying through the air. I don’t know how an urban city like Revere is actually going to get this accomplished, but I think we need to be on top of it instead of being reactive, we can be proactive.”