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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."
Meh. By the time they get something like this up and running, home fabbing will probably be very viable anyway.
Je me fous du passé
I'm sorry, but that's just a dumb analogy. Email isn't overnight or even fast, it's nigh instantaneous. How about "overnight shipping for free" or something else that doesn't involve breaking it down into bits?
How about the security implications? Hack the system, free stuff. Or, mail a bomb to your ex.
The postal system is more secure because people are constantly in the loop.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Nice fantasy - we can't even get fiber to the home let alone deliver things to your cellar.
Even if this were practical for large businesses like the old pneumatic tube system in NYC, there is no way it would be practical for someone to dig it out to every home in the area for a handful of deliveries per month at the most. Digging tunnels is expensive and time consuming.
The best you could hope for is to have it dug to the basement of a large apartment complex.
I read the internet for the articles.
Because its the only thing that makes sense?
You going to put a large tube above ground in the way of everything? This is the well established technique - subways, sewers, utility tunnels, even catacombs. If this were to be implemented it could even follow the existing networks. The tubes could follow the subways to neighborhood distribution centers or the sewers to individual buildings.
If you put it above ground, you get increased traffic congestion (given that it will reduce available space), lesser security (items could "fall off the truck" any place the system was accessible) and a lesser adaptability. If a river is in the way of a surface road, you have to build a bridge. If a river is in the way of a tunnel, you build more tunnel.
You must live somewhere where things never freeze. In colder climates, foundations have to be built under the frostline, which makes basements pretty much a standard feature.