What a terrible idea. The pilot only has one pipe that goes between two locations. There’s no indication of how they would scale this to actually be useful for local delivery. And maintenance when the trolleys break down would be a nightmare. Just like the Boring Company tunnels, the folks who dream this stuff up don’t think about how it can scale beyond a demo. They just figure they’ll figure it out later, but real-world tech is not like scaling a SaaS product.
An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
71–80 of 196 posts
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#72They cite pneumatic tubes as an inspiration. Why not straight up build pneumatic tubes of their own?
Maintaining pressurized grids is hard enough for the systems in use in hospitals, and any small failure in a pressurized pipe has the potential for a huge disaster.
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#73[flagged]
You receive mail and packages from a subway/train?
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Old unused railways being repurposed as bike paths actually can be good for general mobility, traffic safety, etc. In the case you are describing I'd still say it is more of a symptom of an underlying issue to be honest. One you yourself do actually describe. > The County also goes to great lengths to spend as much money as possible. When digging a new tunnel, the excavated material was used to stuff the old tunnel,…
I walk on the bike paths now and then. There isn't remotely the traffic on them like the parallel road. And that's in good weather. 6 months of the year, when it's wet and chilly, it's empty. While transit would be carrying lots more people year round. Then there's the rail line that used to run from Renton to Bothell, paralleling 405 which is gridlocked every day. A couple of people are on the bike path now and then…
Sure, I get your point. In your specific case in your specific region, it is a shame that this did happen. However, the first comment you made was a much more generalized, broadly sweeping statement. A statement that effectively did seem to dismiss biking infrastructure or the investment in biking infrastructure. It is that statement I took issue with, not the highly anecdotal specific case it turned out to be based.
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#75This is an interesting idea and I’ll be curious to see if the economics works out, but I hope the company realizes that “pipe dream” does not have positive connotations.
See also: Boom, Soylent.
Are there any other negatively-named companies?
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#76What happens to the tubes if the company goes out of business?
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's NIMBY neighbourhoods firing a pre-emptive salvo, to prevent those lines, and the easements around them from being re-developed into new transit lines. Presumably to keep the poors and undesirables and people without cars out of their beautiful town. /waves in the general direction of Kirkland, WA.
The Burke-Gilman trail is also representative of the madness of King County transit.
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Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#78This 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.
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#79This 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 whooshing through offices, banks and mailrooms, powered by compressed air.
Re: An underground delivery train comes to the Atlanta suburbs
#80I 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.
That depends on the local legal framework. Many states have a one call program, and if you properly call the number anything you encounter that isn't marked isn't your problem if you go through it. (you still need to be careful as things can kill you, but legally you are not at fault for breaking anything that wasn't marked)
The hard part is in places where there are things of archeological interest. Most of the US doesn't have this as North America has a lack of easily accessible materials that will last and so the ancients mostly used things that didn't last. In most of the world (and parts of the US) ancient civilization often left things behind that are of interest.