Denver Airport Automated Baggage System Abandoned

cherylchase writes "Denver International Airport opened in 1995 with an ambitious fully automated baggage system: 26 miles of underground track, thousands of small gray carts, all controlled by a mainframe programmed for just in time delivery. But the system never worked well; bugs delayed the airport's opening for months (at $1M/day). The system has now been abandoned as a cost cutting measure." From the article: "Technology, too, has brought change. Back then, the big-brained mainframe doing it all from command central was the model of high tech. Today the very idea of it sounds like a cold-war-era relic, engineers say. Decentralization and mobile computing technology have taken over just about everything, allowing airlines, warehouse operators and shippers like FedEx to learn with just a few clicks the whereabouts of an item in motion, a feature that was supposed to be a chief strength of the baggage system."

Comments

DIA, a monument to the past

[Jeffrey Baker]

The entirety of the Denver Int'l Airport is a depressing capstone to an era whose time has already passed. DIA is 34000 acres (138 sq km) of blacktop in the wilderness, 22 miles from the commercial center of the city it supposedly serves. The baggage system is a charming anachronism from the days when people checked tons of baggage; most air travellers now avoid checking baggage whenever possible. The sprawling terminals are more suited to the aircraft than the passengers that have to traverse them. The whole scene is a kind of 20th-century technoabortion nightmare.

In 30 years what are the people of Denver going to have to show for this vast investment? When jet fuel is $5 per gallon, and United is a long-forgotten corporate failure, and all the 757s in the world are decaying under the Mojave sun, what good will that airport be? While the remaining wealthy are shuttled around in their private aircraft, Denver citizens are going to think that the airport seems like a rather long trip on a bicycle. They'll probably be wondering if that permanenty-ruined 34000 acres might have made nice farmland, and how many mainline railroads they could have had for the same price.

Re:Unions killed it?

[JonnyCalcutta]

Yeh, after all, what do we need people for? We should just do away with people completely and have robot consumers buying the things made by robot creators. Its the ultimate economic model - a perfect capitalist loop with no wastage and infinite efficiency.

Now, where's my patent application robot?