I wonder what's their plan when a vehicle gets stuck?
A powerful plunger!
An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
121–130 of 196 posts
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#122What problem is this system trying to solve? It seems to be, in this initial deployment, that the office park is too far away from the restaurants its employees want to visit, compelling them to drive there. I feel like a better solution would be permitting denser and mixed-use development, so employees can walk to their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km to them or paying for a delivery…
I feel like comments like this always come up. Basically reducing it to, why not just become Manhattan? They want a solution for today, not decades from today which is what urban planning would take. But also they likely want the neighborhood they built/moved to. They don’t want to live in a super dense mixed use plaza. They also want solutions that the plethora of communities like theirs can replicate. They just wan…
Classic straw man argument, there's a pretty big difference from a walkable and incrementally more dense neighborhood and Manhattan.
We're not going to tear down and rebuild everything all at once, it's going to take time and work to get us out of the massive car dependent hole we've dug for ourselves. It seems Atlanta has massively oversupplied (to it's own detriment) parking and prioritized space for cars, and neglected to consider that cities depend on attracting a sufficent density of humans.
https://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/news/2022/07/11/atlanta-...
> Studies conducted prior to the pandemic indicate that only 30% of nearly 100,000 parking spaces in Downtown Atlanta are used during peak hours.
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#123If any Dutch entrepreneur is listening: I have been dreaming about the same delivery mechanism for the Netherlands. Difference with Atlanta? There are canals everywhere, inside and outside the cities. It might be possible to just lay a waterproof pipe at the bottom of many existing canals to create an extremely cheap network for autonomous robotic deliveries.
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Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#124This isn't a new concept. NYC (among other cities) had networks of Pneumatic tubes to shuttle intra-city mail around. For NYC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor... For Paris: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_pneumatic_post It will be interesting if the economics work in suburban sprawl.
Hence, the article: > As the company’s name teases, the idea may seem futuristic, but it’s far from new. Let’s call it a cousin of the pipe-forward delivery solution favored in the 19th and early 20th century — the pneumatic tube. In cities like London and New York, networks of pipes that snaked underground and through buildings allowed people to send urgent packages, telegrams, checks, and at least one sick cat whoo…
Pneumatic tubes are also still in use on a smaller scale: for trash collection [1], in hospitals [2], and in stores [3].
[1]: https://ny.curbed.com/2018/4/12/17226296/new-york-infrastruc...
[2]: https://www.swisslog-healthcare.com/en-gb/company/blog/how-a...
[3]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/zt29bw/my_costco_st...
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#125I wonder how long it’s going to take to break even. It’s pretty expensive to install piping. Even if you use no-dig tech. Also, if they go out of business the infrastructure built isn’t going to be taken away. The problem being that a huge part of rising construction cost in infrastructure is poor documentation of current infrastructure. You have a lot of stops in production when you encounter unknown piping.
I wonder if they could supplement their income by being an ISP? the "last mile" is (apparently) the single biggest cost in that industry as well. For the low, low cost of a few fibre lines (which can snarf down 100s of gigabits these days) you can provide "last mile" services to anyone at the end of your tunnel thanks to 5G. If you got even more fancy, design the system so you can drill into it anywhere along the way, and robotically add new taps (not to the fibre, but to copper or microwave lines) along the way. They have directional drilling already for drilling under highways or angled oil/gas pipelines.
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel like comments like this always come up. Basically reducing it to, why not just become Manhattan? They want a solution for today, not decades from today which is what urban planning would take. But also they likely want the neighborhood they built/moved to. They don’t want to live in a super dense mixed use plaza. They also want solutions that the plethora of communities like theirs can replicate. They just wan…
Classic straw man argument, there's a pretty big difference from a walkable and incrementally more dense neighborhood and Manhattan. We're not going to tear down and rebuild everything all at once, it's going to take time and work to get us out of the massive car dependent hole we've dug for ourselves. It seems Atlanta has massively oversupplied (to it's own detriment) parking and prioritized space for cars, and negl…
There’s nothing straw man about it, it’s reality of suburbanite life.
I’ve worked in “walkable” office parks and have the time the guys at the office would get in a car and still drive elsewhere. It doesn’t solve for the overall problem.
The only way to actually eliminate the drive-to-a-place problem is dense Manhattanesque cities where vehicles are prohibitive for the average Joe and robust public transit exists to allow Joe to make a quick jaunt down the road.
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
And/or encouraging more use of things like bikes. I'd bet that painting a bike lane and putting up concrete barriers is cheaper than trenching out a three-quarter mile pseudo-pneumatic-tube-system.
Have you spent any time in Atlanta in August? Biking outside is not just biking, but also swimming - through the humidity. I don't mind it (avid all-season mountain biker) but most office workers wouldn't opt for that in their fancy office clothing just for a sandwich.
Seems solvable with an e-bike or other micro-mobility options. "You're not made of sugar, you won't melt."
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#128Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#129What problem is this system trying to solve? It seems to be, in this initial deployment, that the office park is too far away from the restaurants its employees want to visit, compelling them to drive there. I feel like a better solution would be permitting denser and mixed-use development, so employees can walk to their favorite restaurants on the ground floor instead of driving >1km to them or paying for a delivery…
I'll never understand these sort of objections to convenience in favor of density. This is awesome and I can see it being a utility similar to water pipes or electricity going to a house for the same reason we all have mailboxes. Delivery is convenient and this could make it cheap and fast.