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Underground Freight Networks
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."
Basements make very little sense in places that practically never get tornadoes...to people who think basements only serve as protection from tornadoes. The temperature and moisture levels in a basement are pretty constant, and we used ours to store certain foods. It is also one of the cheapest ways to expand living space in your home.
The Post Office Underground Railway, London First pneumatic then electrically powered. In 1853, a small vacuum tube about 225 yards (200 metres) long was built to deliver letters inside a Post Office building. The system, now known as a Lamson Tube, became very popular, and in 1859 the Pneumatic Despatch Company was formed to build a larger subterranean line between the Post Office buildings. A test-line 450 yards (411 metres) long was built near Battersea, and the Post Office approved it. Read all about it at http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3826019