Someday, A Tiny Subway Will Deliver Your Groceries

http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/08/someday-a-tiny-subway-will-deliver-your-groceries/

by edw519 • 17 years ago

38 43 17 years ago

wired.com

hendler• 17 years ago

Ahhhh, yes. The tubes. I've heard of this internet before.

GiraffeNecktie• 17 years ago

The rats in my city will be very, very happy indeed.

sethg• 17 years ago

New business model: design a pet carrier that can run in the cargo tunnel, and rent out cats....

sophacles2• 17 years ago

Better gaming model: design a cargo box for the tunnel with web cams and laser turrets (or some other form of rat killing small arms). Working title: ratpocalypse, until something cooler is suggested.

xelfer• 17 years ago

So anyone with a shovel is a hacker?

gchucky• 17 years ago

First, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_pneumatic_post, the Prague system ended in 2002 when it flooded.

Second, the New York City post offices used to send packages to each other via pneumatic tubes. The system stopped in 1953, though, when it became rather impractical. I see that very much happening here.

And also, do we really _want_ this sort of thing? Are we just too lazy to get out of our houses to get a loaf of bread or whatever?

aka-2• 17 years ago

Yes. Online grocery shopping with dedicated delivery services is huge here (in the UK). Imagine how much bigger it would be when you could order stuff in much smaller batches at more regular intervals? Loaf of bread and a pint of milk to home at 7am, and a sandwich to your office at 1pm?

If you include the postal system and all those little trips people make, we are moving stuff between various hubs and houses several times a day anyway, often with dedicated trips using our hugely inefficient, slow and polluting vehicles. We could really get the eco crowd onside with this one.

jodrellblank2• 17 years ago

and a sandwich to your office at 1pm?

http://twitter.com/deliciouslunch did that for a few weeks, on a local scale. Tweet to them in the morning, have a sandwich delivered same day.

They stopped pretty quickly - but it looks like they might have plans to resume one day.

tjic• 17 years ago

> do we really _want_ this sort of thing

Replacing labor intensive delivery that involves lots of big brown trucks illegally parking in traffic with an underground, computerized, electrically powered system?

Yeah, that sounds horrible.

aka-2• 17 years ago

The only thing that prevents from thinking about this idea in the same way as flying cars is our water delivery network. if we could build that 100+ years ago (albeit at gigantic expense), perhaps we have finally reached the technology level where we can expand to an extremely high-speed automated 24-hour postal service.

When you think about it, society is already curving back towards more delivery services and less 'go and fetch' services - I know I now do more shopping online than I do in an actual shop, and those thousands of dedicated supermarket delivery trucks (and attendant drivers_ are a huge saving waiting to made, alongside the postmen.

What we need is for the government to step in and finance a really large scale trial in co-operation with the postal service and the various home delivery services. Mail, pizza and groceries would be enough of a tipping point I think.

kingkawn3• 17 years ago

Any promise about massive new infrastructure are dubious, especially one that is met by pre-existing services.

bsaunder2• 17 years ago

You mean like ubiquitous fiber communications?

This is entirely plausible. The building of the infrastructure could be highly automated and done in parallel.

kingkawn3• 17 years ago

There is too much pre-existing infrastructure underground to automate it completely in a cost-efficient way. In general, almost all construction work other than heavy lifting is still done by people.

that said, I am looking forward to my flying car.

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

Agreed, the amount of work that would have to go into placing thousands of these tiny subways under the city to deliver to every building is insane, especially considering that they could flood or even a minor ground swell could dislodge the tracks causing a jam.

Sticking something like this underground just sounds stupid to me, especially when it would be impossible to have people actually go in to fix things. IMO this would either need to be built onto existing subway infrastructure where access to the system for repairs will be relatively easy . . . or do the cheap-easy way of just build it above ground.

I mean most large cities are getting expanding amounts of skyway (the enclosed walkways between buildings), once this gets to sufficient scale it would be no extra effort to attach pre-fabed tunnels to the bottom of the skyway networks. It's currently part of the Calgary by-law that all new buildings have to be connected to their skyway system.

The mass installation of new infrastructure is absurd considering the amount of work it requires below-ground, however above-ground would be exceptionally simple with a well developed skyway system. There's very little point of implementing this system without making it big, so until its exceptionally cheap per mile to install it will never happen, because our cities are simply way too big for a project like this if it's costly per mile.

ALee2• 17 years ago

Reminds me of the mail delivery system in the 5th element... So many creative innovations in that movie.

ALee2• 17 years ago

Reminds me of the 5th element.

narag• 17 years ago

Then, I bet you missed "Brazil".

Edit: I've watched The Fift Element three of four times, Brazil only once. But I can't help thinking in "Brazil" when I read about tubes.

rjurney2• 17 years ago

I have only five words and a link: The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel http://www.idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda-weehawken_burri...

s-phi-nl• 17 years ago

This one of the funniest things I've read all week!

rjurney2• 17 years ago

Its really innovative, huh?

io• 17 years ago

Flying cars first, please.

bsaunder2• 17 years ago

Automating our point to point transportation system would be a huge value. Seems like this would compete in some ways with self-driving vehicles (though a controlled rail system seems more energy efficient).

ken• 17 years ago

Also on HN this morning: "The career choice that delivers", about a postman.

It's not unusual that I see articles here both on how some new device is going to save us from physical labor, and right next to that an article about how somebody discovered that they're happier when doing more physical activity.

I don't think I want a tiny subway to deliver my groceries. What's the point?

sophacles2• 17 years ago

I can do plenty of physical activity and labor without going to a store (an activity that I very much dislike, with the exception of the grocery at 3am when I'm the only customer).

The point is I can now choose how to do my physical activity.

mseebach• 17 years ago

> Tilleman acknowledges the idea sounds like a Tomorrowland attraction from 1965, but says it’s completely feasible with enough funding.

Really, most projects tend to be feasible with enough funding. Actually, the word feasible seems to be somewhat linked to whether or the idea would work with reasonable funding.

I think a system where packages are delivered via small, electrical driver-less trucks is much more feasible, since roads already exist.

weavejester2• 17 years ago

It seems like it would be easier to use tiny robot zepplins instead. Much more CPU power would be required to control the robots, but that seems like it would be cheaper than setting up a nationwide network of tunnels.

Or in cities with footpaths, what about strapping a GPS and AI to a segway-like robot and sending that on its way?

recampbell• 17 years ago

Miniature Zepplins are great until the wind starts blowing. Most of the large cities are coastal.

Robots on segways are ok until someone decides they need another segway (or whatever it happens to be carrying).

Of course, I think the tunnels could suffer the same security problems, whether physical or virtual. Imagine hacking your neighbourhood tunnel to get free pizza!

weavejester2• 17 years ago

Yes, wind might be an issue for miniture zepplins, though I wonder whether there might be ways to mitigate the effect of wind. It's not like they'd be flying very high.

Regarding robots on segways, the robots would not be on the segways; they'd be self-balancing robots of approximately human dimension with a rack for carrying parcels. You wouldn't be able to easily ride one, and stealing one could be made quite difficult. For instance, you could have the robot automatically phone home along with it's current GPS position when it detects itself being "kidnapped". Or you could program it to emit an extremely loud siren. Or fry its own circuits so that it's useless to the criminals. Or snap photographs of the perps and email them to a remote location.

Flemlord• 17 years ago

For all practical purposes, this would be like the replicator on Star Trek. You select from a menu of offerings, press a button, and whatever you ordered pops out a little while later.

(sigh) Nothing that cool would ever happen in real life.

jrockway• 17 years ago

Nothing that cool would ever happen in real life.

Perhaps not exactly like that. But in some cities, Amazon offers same-day delivery that is like $7 for Prime customers. (Sadly, not Chicago.) Order your new computer in the morning, it shows up at your office / home in the afternoon. Pretty convenient. No tubes required.

imgabe• 17 years ago

Oh it used to happen. It was called kozmo.com, and it was wonderful. Once constructed, a network of tubes will be vastly cheaper to operate than an army of bike messengers. I'm looking forward to this.

ChaitanyaSai2• 17 years ago

This isn't a prank? I find the claims dubious.

What are the energy costs of automating the burrowing of these tunnels to connect,say a small city like Boston? The Boston Sewer network is ~1500 miles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Water_and_Sewer_Commissi...) and I am guessing this would have a comparable edge length.

And then, how do you deal with breakdowns, logistically and financially? It will have more complicated machinery than mere plumbing, with finite half-lives that'll require switch-outs.

The Boston Sewer Commission charges 60 dollars per month per family unit, and I am guessing a significant fraction goes into upkeep.

Will anyone want to spend that kind of money for the slim marginal benefit of getting things a bit faster than Amazon?

clistctrl• 17 years ago

seriously? Boston would be one of the more difficult cities to connect. Boston is old, has a very established infrastructure, and a pretty expansive underground infrastructure already. I would say doing this in a place like Minneapolis might be easier because its newer (more documented, less underground infrastructure) of course then you have weather problems.

ChaitanyaSai2• 17 years ago

True,Boston may be a bad example for those reasons, but I wanted an example mainly to get a handle on the numbers. Minneapolis might be a better fit, but will the tubing mileage needed and the problems change?

jonasvp• 17 years ago

Great idea and these guys have taken it pretty far already: http://www.cargocap.com/

In a couple of decades, our kids will be asking us: "... and you had heavy trucks deliver goods within the city? Nasty."

mrduncan• 17 years ago

Tunnel paths will be pre-planned so as to avoid interfering with existing infrastructure.

I for one am skeptical of this. There is _a lot_ of underground infrastructure which isn't documented. Just think about all of the wiring, sewer lines, gas lines, which are in a typical urban environment. Most of this just has to be found by hand digging. That said, I'd love to be proven wrong.

sstrudeau• 17 years ago

Chicago used to have an underground tunnel delivery system, using tunnels originally built to house telephone lines, used to deliver coal & remove ash:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company

movix• 17 years ago

Apart from agreeing with all the reasons below why this won't work - both technical and the blazingly obvious - and still being an ardent lover of all types of tech... I think that in the 21st century where all our labour saving devices seem to take all our time to operate, control, log in/out, update, check and generally fiddle with so that we have next to zero free time.. isn't there a certain pleasure being missed here in taking a walk to your corner store, saying 'Hi' to a passing neighbour and grabbing a few groceries before getting back home in time to catch the latest episode of Family Guy? Isn't this just another reason for us to stay trapped in front of the computer never leaving the house? /me ducks under a flying car piloted by a pig

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

There was a system like this in New York until the 1950s, when trucks killed it off. If you search google you can also get the RTF version which includes some grainy photos.

http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/_rtf/PneumaticTubes2-09.rt...

No doubt that such a network could be insanely useful (although why the empahsis on having it running to every house? Wouldn't one delivery point per block be adequate?). But I'm extremely skeptical about the autonomous tunnel boring machine. If it's so easy, buy some cheap land and do a demonstration, guys. Talk is cheap.

jodrellblank2• 17 years ago

"When Paris hosted the Exposition Universelle in 1900, it unveiled its vision for the future of transport. The trottoir roulant was a moving walkway that circled the fair in a 3-kilometre loop, its articulated wooden segments "gliding around like a wooden serpent with its tail in its mouth", according to one reporter.

Chicago's walkway, the brainchild of engineer Max Schmidt, consisted of three rings, the first stationary, the second moving at 4 kilometres per hour and the third at 8 km/h, an arrangement that allowed walkers to adjust to each speed before moving to the next.

In fact, the idea of high-speed walkways had been established in New York longer than anywhere else. Back in 1871, local wine merchant Alfred Speer patented the first "endless-travelling sidewalk", and promptly proposed an ambitious elevated moving walkway along Broadway. It would have zipped pedestrians along at up to 30 km/h

Undaunted, Schmidt proposed a flurry of similar projects around Manhattan - running down Broadway, along Wall Street, over the Williamsburg Bridge and across 23rd and 34th Street. To Schmidt, the advantages of the moving walkway were so compelling that he was convinced they would supplant some subways rather than supplement them. By 1909, he was pushing a massive $70 million scheme that would provide Manhattan with a network of subterranean moving sidewalks."

- http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327200.200-how-the-m...

Someday, A Tiny Subway Will Deliver Your Groceries

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