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Underground Freight Networks
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:27 AM
from the yesterday's-tomorrow-today dept.
from the yesterday's-tomorrow-today dept.
morphovar writes "The German Ruhr University of Bochum is conducting experiments with a large-scale model for an automated subterranean transport system. It would use unmanned electric vehicles on rails that travel in a network through pipelines with a diameter of 1.6 meters, up to distances of 150 kilometers. Sending cargo goods through underground pipelines is anything but new — see this scan of a 1929 magazine article about Chicago's underground freight tunnel network (more details). Translating this concept to the 21st century would be something like introducing email for things: you could order something on the Internet and pick it up through a trapdoor in your cellar the next morning."
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I don't have a cellar (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I don't have a cellar (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, there is. In warmer climates basements are often cool and damp (which can make it feel even cooler) compared to the upstairs (this is true in Wisconsin where summers, while generally mild, can still hit 100 F on the hottest days. You spend more time in the basement on these days, usually next to your home-made dry bar. =P Of course tornadoes are irrelevant as generally if tornado sirens go
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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I've seen some nice finished cellars. Now if you want a room you are going to spend 12 hours a day in, you want windows...otherwise it's just like work!
Cellars would make an excellent home theater space, also a great space for a LAN gaming set up. The constant coolness of a cellar would be good for computers, and the heat computers give off would rise to the rest of the house.
Re:I don't have a cellar (Score:4, Informative)
I am not a builder/construction worker but a friend of mine is. I consult him on almost all of my house construction needs. He has in the past told me that adding a basement is much more cost effective long term than a second floor. Basements are much easier to control the environment on than a second floor, have much lower heating and cooling costs, and in fact when used right, can actually lower the HVAC cost for the entire house. He also explained that building a basement is less expensive (in this area) than adding a second floor on a new house. On an already existent house without a basement, it can be much more expensive to excavate the basement than to add the second floor unless you do it yourself. He said the most expensive part of adding a basement is the manpower to safely dig out the new basement under the existing foundation, or move the house off the existing foundation to dig a new foundation (basement level).
Most basements have window wells, windows that are just at or below ground level, and many have an exposed external, or mostly exposed external wall (depending on the grading of the property the house is built upon.)
Now, I am not in the construction business, but he and his family have been for over 80 years, so I trust his opinion.
InnerWeb
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Only if you would otherwise build a one story house to begin with, and I'm firmly of the opinion that in cities where land is expensive due to scarcity, construction of one-story buildings, residential or otherwise, should be prohibited by building code because it is basically squandering land. Don't get me started about all the one story office buildings in the Silicon Valley area. If all of those one-story office buildings were two story buildings, we almost wouldn't have land scarcity at all... but I d
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I dream of a city of the future. Big forward thinking tech companies find some land at some highway crossing somewhere, invest in offices and infrastructure:
Re:I don't have a cellar (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:I don't have a cellar (Score:4, Insightful)
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Whaaaaaa? (Score:3, Funny)
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Fabbing (Score:4, Insightful)
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They should have an integrated wireless connection and be designed to set up a peer to peer mesh network, then automatically share any new design that is loaded into them with any other similar devices within range.
That should pretty much destroy the justification for intellectual property laws... everyone will be scratching their own itches, automatically sharing what they create and automatically being able to leverage other peoples cre
Fabbing and Patents (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, I think that fabbing is going to run into the same "intellectual property" felgercarb that music and video is running into. As far as I know, the only physical objects with copyright hinderances on them are buildings (not sure about china patterns, and silverware).
Right now, there are patents. Are there fair use clauses for patents? If I download a fabbing pattern from a foreign source, am I breaking patent law, or breaking import law? If I scan an object and distribute a fabbing pattern, have I broken patent law? What if I fab something I saw in a TV show, is that a copyright violation, a trademark infringement, or a patent violation? If a beautiful young female made off with one of my silverware fabbing patterns can I say that the dish ran away with the spoon?
I think we may look back on the halcyon days of yore when we only had the RIAA to deal with.
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Re:Fabbing and Patents (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Fabbing (Score:5, Interesting)
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Pneumatic Telegraph (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pneumatic Telegraph (Score:4, Interesting)
A scene from Brazil [imdb.com] springs to mind...
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Re:Pneumatic Telegraph (Score:5, Funny)
Ha! How wrong they were! Everyone knows that series of tubes are much more efficient than big trucks.
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Re:Pneumatic Telegraph (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:Pneumatic Telegraph (Score:5, Funny)
It's real fun when the tube's routing switches go wacky and start directing stool samples to the billing department.
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I am in awe. Your Google link already lists this slashdot article as the third result, noting that it was posted "three hours ago."
I'm not sure if I'm in awe of your Google-bombing skills, or of Google's spidering skills. Either way, I'm in awe.
If they need a consultant, (Score:5, Funny)
Email for things? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Email for things? (Score:5, Funny)
email for things
I already get about 40 emails a day pertaining to my thing. How is this new?
Parent
Security concerns? (Score:4, Insightful)
The postal system is more secure because people are constantly in the loop.
Re:Security concerns? (Score:5, Funny)
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O rly? (Score:4, Funny)
To Your Cellar? (Score:4, Insightful)
Amazing! (Score:5, Funny)
This would be such an amazing improvement over the current state of affairs, where I can order something on the Internet and pick it up through a front door in my living room the next morning.
Re:Amazing! (Score:5, Funny)
One less awkward social interaction to deal with!
Parent
Minor error (Score:5, Funny)
I believe you mean Aperture Science Vital Apparatus Vent.
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Not for the home (Score:5, Insightful)
The best you could hope for is to have it dug to the basement of a large apartment complex.
Like DIA, DOA (Score:5, Interesting)
Denver International Airport tried something along that line [wikipedia.org].
Things went so badly that when they sent camera equipped luggage to trouble shoot the system, they lost their camera equipped baggage. Forever.
United finally abandoned the system a few years ago, though they're still paying for it.
Why did this fail in the past? (Score:3, Interesting)
This mini-tunnel concept was done in Paris about 100 years ago. Small packages were delivered around the city using compressed air in a long series of tubes. It was abandoned by the late 1960s.
Tunnels have problems. Especially in the middle of cities. The buildings are high and the foundations are deep. The tunnels have to be deeper. And their sides re-enforced.
How are you going to keep the water out of them?
What do you do when they become obstructed by cave-in or automated-container collisions?
Who's going to pay for all this?
Who's going to pay to fix it in twenty to fifty years when it becomes known that massive amounts of money were stolen during the initial construction phase? (like the 'big dig' in Boston).
One of the great things about being a student of German history is to watch them meticiously design, craft, and build an elaborate 'solution' and then blow it all up in a fit of Wagnerian madness. Then pick up the pieces, go back into 'DeutscheKraftwerk' (not a real word but a real concept) mentality, and begin the whole process all over again with a new generation purified by fire and the triumph of the will. While the rest of the world just watches and feels sorry for their neighbors.
Way ahead of you (Score:5, Funny)
Routing is easy, as different hamsters have been trained to prefer different types of food - Chicago hamsters prefer pizza, New York hamsters prefer vended hotdogs, Wisconsin hamsters prefer sharp cheddar, etc.
To solve the last mile problem I have issued them all armored hamster balls, so if you see one rolling down the street for the sake of your car I'd recommend avoidance.
MailRail in London (Score:4, Informative)
MailRail [ntlworld.com], in London, came closest to the proposed system. Little automated electric trains carried mail since 1928. It was shut down in 2003. (It's still intact, though; it might be restarted some day.)
MailRail gives a sense of the constraints of a realistic system. The tunnels are 9 feet in diameter and double-tracked, so it's possible to get repair crews and equipment into the tunnels without much trouble. For small-tube systems, breakdowns are tough to deal with. MailRail was a railroad in miniature, with stations, sidings, switches, repair shops, and work trains. Even rails wear out and have to be reground or replaced, so MailRail had the gear to do "maintenance of way" work. All those things are needed, and many of them are labor intensive.
The operating cost on MailRail was quite high, even though all the capital costs had long since been paid for. Cost was 3x to 5x the cost of using trucks. But the real problem was that it didn't go to the right places; over the decades, post offices had been moved to locations off the MailRail line, and only three of the nine stations were still in use.
The Chicago tunnel system had a different problem. It was designed when long-haul freight was by rail and local delivery was horse-powered. Bear in mind that trains were routinely hauling heavy loads by 1850, but trucks didn't appear until the 1920s and didn't work well until the 1930s. (1920s trucks had power comparable to that of a small car today.) So for a seventy-year period, local delivery was badly matched to long-haul transport. Early attempts to deal with this problem involved breeding very large horses [shirehorse.org]. This was the period of pneumatic tubes, underground freight rail systems, and similar attempts to fix the local delivery problem. Once truck engines and drivetrains become powerful enough to do the job, those local delivery systems were no longer needed.
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You going to put a large tube above ground in the way of everything? This is the well established technique - subways, sewers, utility tunnels, even catacombs. If this were to be implemented it could even follow the existing networks. The tubes could follow the subways to neighborhood distribution centers or the sewers to individual buildings.
If you put it above ground, you get increased traffic congestion (given that it will reduce available space), lesser sec
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Re:good luck w/ bombs (Score:5, Interesting)
The point is to be sensible about securing it, not to not have it. We still fly planes, don't we? We still allow rental of U-Haul trucks, right? Just because it CAN be used for bad behavior doesn't mean a) it will be, or b) it can't be secured with a reasonable amount of caution. Hell, if we felt THAT way about things, guns would have been outlawed a long time ago. (AND they would still exist anyway, AND people would still use them for bad stuff.)
All that said, though, of course subterranean tunnels make a tasty target for destructive behavior. The point is that a tunnel system under a metropolitan area should be carefully monitored. And if it can be quickly flooded (or all oxygen can be quickly removed) in the event of fire or "evildoers," all the better.
In effect, the tunnels under Chicago DID cause widespread damage a few years ago. A construction crew drove a piling down into the Chicago river and punched through the tunnel wall underneath, flooding the entire downtown area's basements with river water. So it can be dangerous to have the tunnels, but better provisions for evildoers and morons (probably more the latter) would have minimized the problem. That's an old tunnel system, but a new one could be built with the ability to quickly isolate one problem section.
I guess I'm reacting to the terror terror, you know? We must be wise and sensible, but if a tunnel system under the city is the only appropriate and complete solution to a given problem, we can't let fear of something rare (in fact, so rare as to be historically significant when it happens) take it off the table.
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However, if you're somehow insinuating that terrorist acts are up you have a disgraceful knowledge of history. I mean, it's been almost thirty years since someone tried to assasinate a US president. Things are pretty mellow all things considered. While Al Qaida
Re:Wouldn't work in Florida (Score:4, Funny)
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