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Ski Lifts Can Could Help Get Cargo Traffic Off the Road
An anonymous reader writes with this except from a beautifully illustrated, thought-provoking article: "These days, we use them almost exclusively to transport skiers and snowboarders up snow slopes, but before the 1940s, aerial ropeways were a common means of cargo transport, not only in mountainous regions but also on flat terrain. An electrically powered aerial ropeway is one of the cheapest and most efficient means of transportation available. Some generate excess energy that can be used to power nearby factories or data centers. An innovative system called RopeCon (not to be confused with a role-playing convention held annually in Finland) can move up to 10,000 tonnes of freight per hour."
Ski lifts, however, are of no utility when conducting a simple once-over of one's grammar.
what advantage does this technology hold over trains?
I already thought up 4 ways to Rob it thinking of the hardest circumstances.
There used to be an aerial tramway for moving mining ore in Zeehan in Tasmania. It was the neatest thing I have ever seen. Never did figure why they stopped using it. High maintenance costs maybe. Locally we have some big mining conveyors of 40km+ (Google Maps - Del park, Western Australia). The RopeCon system seems a great combo of these that has potentially less impact than building a road. V Interesting.
Aerial lines can go what, 3 miles? Don't most shipping containers go thousands of miles? It wouldn't be worth the construction cost even in the long run considering the distance and variety of locations that something needs to travel.
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I'm sure the various cargo hauling companies of the world would love to operate a system of these things. "Operate" being the key word here. Who's gonna pay to install what amount to heavy duty poles everywhere? Half the cost of those things is buying the land from the current owners. I'm sure the gov't could eminent domain some of it (in the US, anyway. Dunno 'bout elsewhere), and some land could be rented, but it's still an expensive proposition. And then the maintenance will still be high. And so on, and so forth. It's a grand idea, but it's pretty darn niche. Most companies won't put down big bucks for something like this without the promise of immediate fiscal benefits/incentives. I'm sure the gov't could help out there too, but I've got my own moral and ethical reasons for being leery of that...
Again, it looks nice, but it probably wouldn't work in real life.
So it can move 10000 tonnes of freight per hour, but how far? What's the market? I can't see these competing with interstate bulk transport.
This does not only concern energy use: contrary to a road or a railroad track, a cargo ropeway can be built straight through nature without harming animal and plant life (or, potentially, straight through a city without harming human life).
Then scroll down to the big ugly modern cargo ropeways/conveyor belts in the bottom of the article and you can see they're ugly as fuck and can be seen for many miles around. Compared to that a road or railroad is almost invisible. They also generously ignore that we've gotten a lot better at building bridges and tunnels than before, not worse.
I suppose it makes sense if you have a huge, stable amount of materials moving point-to-point, but for the most part such a cargoway will only add another exchange point where goods must be unloaded and reloaded which costs time and money. Also there's very little flexibility, with trucks or trains you can run more or less and even sell parts of it if things are slow. With this you have almost only fixed costs and if you hit the capacity limit it's a very hard limit.
This reminds me a little of the people that try to revive the zeppelins, it's only going to work in some really niche cases and those places usually already have one.
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It was very useful in letting me know about the RopeCon convention in Finland, which everyone might have confused this device with with had it not clarified.
The principal problem of this, and most other similar suggestions, is that while such a system is good for a-b transport, reality is a network. Such a system helps you not at all, unless the goods to be delivered are already at the start-station, and are being transported to the end-station.
If not, you need to *first* load it on one mode of transport (typically some kind of car) -then- drive to the nearest "station" where the goods are repackaged, then near the destination, repeat.
It turns out the delays and costs of reloading cargo, frequently makes the economy such that it's better to simply go the entire distance by lorry. The advantage of the lorry is that it goes from where your goods are, to where you want them, with zero intermediary re-loads. (typically anyway, sure there's exceptions)
The lack of a robust network, also makes the system vulnerable. When (not if!) one ropeway breaks down, what do you do ? Reroute onto roads ? Wait ?
I think the best hopes are for dual-mode-transport, that is, vehicles that can drive both on normal roads -and- on special-purpose tracks of some sort. Doing this, gives you the best of two worlds. Have a look at http://www.ruf.dk/ for an example system.
Who wouldn't want to say that!?!
In your face nuclear powered data centers!
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Tell me more about this RopeCon you speak of. I am a level 47 Paladin and am interested in exploring the northern lands.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
...but before the 1940s, aerial ropeways were a common means of cargo transport, not only in mountainous regions but also on flat terrain.
Before the 1900s, horses were a common means of cargo transport. They're even more efficient than a ropeway. Just add food and water.
Where's the thought provoking article on horses?
The technology was popular for the transport of wood and wood products
I can see how it would be useful for something like logging. It's like a train track with moveable endpoints. You could harvest a huge area without an investment in fixed capital. Mining would be similar. It's like a Cat truck if you don't have liquid fuels or rubber.
Almost predictably, the first search return for "ropecon" is an article about extracting resources from some third world country with one of these contraptions that can bypass "obstacles such as houses, roads or rivers". All that's missing is a Marine detachment and a group of local freedom fighters to blow the thing up periodically.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
This
http://lost-ropeways.de/forum/Lost-Ropeways%20Forum_t_73_0_Leimen-Transportseilbahn-Heidelberger-Zement.html
used to transport limestone from a quarry near Nußloch to a cement factory in Leimen (Baden), about 5km away.
From TFA and my experience living next to this thing (about 15 years ago) I would judge the pros and cons:
+ highly energy efficient (can even generate energy when transporting downhill)
- only when in continuous operation
+ low footprint / can pass over existing structures
- moderately ugly
+ almost noiseless for those living along the route (when well maintained)
- works only between two fixed terminals
+ independent from road-traffic
- loading / unloading of anything but bulk cargo can be tricky
In summary:
An excellent, possibly the best, solution for a some special transport problems (e.g. moving a steady stream of bulk cargo across a city).
In addition to rope systems we should also use pneumatic tubes. Mail in Manhattan used to be transported across town efficiently, until GM convinced the Post Office to switch to trucks.
I also expect any day now for passenger dirigibles to make a comeback. Popular Science can't be wrong. They've been saying it since 1974.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
The point of the submission isn't that rope is replacing rail. Rail can do 7 times or more than the capacity cited in the article:
http://www.ugpti.org/pubs/html/dp-170/pg4.php
The point is that seeing how our engineering forebears across the ages moved stuff around by elaborate rope and pulley systems, is freaking cool, and so is the fact that it's still incredibly useful in specific applications today.
UPS will need to change to "What can brown pull for you?"
It could be an alternative to this sort of thing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CarGoTram
It goes from one factory (or warehouse) to another. Both have the same owner and are in the same city.
This is the sort of solution you might choose if you are unable to expand your existing property. You buy another property near by and then connect them.
The big trouble is getting the rights to install such an ugly thing. You'd have to lobby the government to make a special allowance. Probably you'd go on about how you're bringing jobs to help the local economy. Maybe the government would even help you, probably by grabbing chunks of land for the support towers.
The headline on this one appears to be quite a stretch. The article is interesting, but claiming that "ski lifts could help get cargo traffic off the road" does not seem remotely realistic in the near future. All of the examples of modern ropeways discussed in the article were systems that spanned less than 10 km, or even less than 1 km (as far as I noted, anyway). To even think about a system that could possibly displace cargo traffic on the roads on a significant scale, you'd probably be talking about hundreds of kilometers. At such short distances, you might consider moving cargo around a large city and its suburbs or something like that, but then the complexity of the distribution network that would be required would likely be a limiting factor, especially when the roads are already there.
Is that if you have a stable, point-to-point thing then, well, you want a train. Trains work great for moving cargo. They are extremely efficient, using 1% or less of the energy a truck would need to move it. America still moves many, many tons of cargo daily by train. If you've ever visited a city with a major railway going through it you see trains multiple times an hour, 24 hours a day. They also move pretty quick. While heavy cargo trains can't zip like light rail passenger trains, they can still do 70ish MPH without a problem.
The only reason they aren't used in place of trucks for cargo completely is their inflexibility. They are largely point-to-point transit. You can't have crisscrossing rails and lots of intersections for them to turn on and choose where they want to go.
So I fail to see what a rope cargo system would do that trains don't do better. It certainly wouldn't be as fast, I have trouble believing it'd be as efficient, and as you say it'd be ugly.
Seems like a solution looking for a problem. We don't have a problem moving goods in bulk, place to place for cheap. Heavy cargo rail does a superb job, and promises only to get better with hybrid trains (locomotives are ideal for hybrid technology, they are electric direct drive already and the need a lot of added weight to function correctly). What we do not have is as good a system for delivering goods to a final destination. Trucks are the best we've come up with for something that can move a reasonable amount of material for a reasonable price, yet can go to arbitrary locations as needed.
Expects a glowing pneumatic tubes story submission soon.
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I grew up in Porsgrunn, Norway, a city which had two such cable transport systems:
Both of them were used to transport limestone, the largest one moved the output north from the Kjørholt mines to the Hydro fertilizer factory on Herøya. It passed over several ravines and steep cliff faces and ran for decades with very little maintenance, although the amount of limestone rock underneath it, as well as the occasional lost carrier wagon laying on the ground showed that it would probably not be safe to climb up and hitch a ride in one of the (empty) returning wagons.
(I do remember being very tempted though, despite the warning signs and barbed wire wrapped around the supporting pylons!)
On this sat image you can easily see the remains of the system, in the form of the totally straight road "Gravavegen" and the four concrete supports which held a pylon where the system crossed the small bay "Versvika".
The other cable system ran more or less in parallel with the first, starting from an open quarry about 5 km east of the fertilizer factory and going south to the Norcem cement factory which also needed limestone as a raw material.
This one is much harder to locate on sat images, the most obvious sign is this wide stripe in the forest:
Norcem
Terje
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"
Well the article itself is wishful thinking. It won't replace JIT, and it sure won't replace rolling warehouses that deliver items exactly to where it needs to go within a few minutes of needing it. Unless fuel hits $10+gal or more, trucks will continue to be the cheapest way to get things from point a to b.
Even then, you'll be able to see the market react to whatever is cheapest. And in anycase, we already have something similar to 'aerial ropeways' they're called rail roads. And they cost 4-8x as much to ship something than by road. Even in the middle of no-where Canada, it's cheaper to drop things off by plane or truck unless the federal government is subsidizing your rail line to keep your community of 800 people going when you're 1800mi away from civilization.
Om, nomnomnom...
Only the convention has a Wikipedia article, not this thing..
I Can Could First Post Posted
Here in europe the roads are cluttered with trucks, to get such lift infrastructure along paths which already deal with tonnes of cargo and therefore maybe kill of half of the trucks would be great. Sure a bad thing for the truckdrivers but the alternative is to eventually broaden the road twice or so making every Major highway 8 lanes. This would however cause a lot more pollution and whatnot. Just imagine a lift system on which you could load the standard sea container.
It might not be a big problem in the States, ..; but here in Europe, the road are clogged by trucks.
I think this migt be a valable option for several reasons:
1) less traffic on the roads
2) less accidents caused by sleepy truck-drivers
3) Less human interaction needed than for train transport.
4) Less pollution than with truck-transport
If you have a good network of those lifts, you would only need short-range transport
We had one where I grew up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsjo_aerial_tramway
It was pretty cool driving under the slowly moving carriages containing tons of iron ore.
... on being the pioneering 21st century air-hobo.
Can could have checked grammar excerpt haven't!
It's also very handy for moving people to their doom.
You can also use this for commuters.
This blog suggests even to combine this with Segways Puma: http://thefirst12.blogspot.com/
While ropeways may be suited for short stretches of hilly terrain, it is difficult to imagine that it would be economical in general. There are a lot of moving parts, which must be moved and maintained, and ultimately it will be slow with low throughput.
SkyTran is basically an efficient high-speed packet switched passive maglev network. Its extremely light vehicles and elevated track allow it to be built at low cost--especially considering that alternatives generally require tearing down buildings and other earth work. Aside from high speeds, the maglev tech also affords low maintenance and operating cost, with basically no moving parts. Naturally, it would be cleaner, quieter, and require less waiting, making it far more attractive as public transit system.
It would also be straightforward to use the system for small cargo as well, using dedicated stops.
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Nature doesn't care how it looks, it cares what it's footprint is. Roads result in a segmented habitat, millions of tons of CO2, and roadkill galore. This would result in none of those.
Why not railroads? Much less visual impact, much less affected by the wind, technology extensively proved, and efficiency demonstrated (and not made-up or expected as in TFA).
I've often wondered why we don't create a national infrastructure of underground pipes for the transportation of the reasonably small stuff that constitutes the majority of cargo. No wind resistance, no eyesore. Googled and found this brochure for it!
No animal has ever been hurt by an ugly construction, this structure exists above the trees. So the animals can live beneath it,their habitat is not cut up by a road, no animals are killed on the road.
Clearly you are one of those people who think oil slicks are good for nature because they sparkle so nicely in the sun.
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don't go up and down hills very well. On the other hand, using overhead conveyors to transport bulk loads to ports can be very efficient. Most of the posts on this thread seem to be of the "why would anyone want a bicycle, it's slower than a Porsche" variety - i.e. spectacularly missing the point.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Thats what they were orignally built for. The only reason most goods go by road is cost. It would faily simple to have numerous rail hubs with goods being delivered the short distance to the shop/factory by small trucks instead of having 40 ton trucks driving all the way across the continent.
Like everybody, I imagine, when the submission mentioned "RopeCon" I immediately thought of the role-playing convention held annually in Finland. Not a day goes by without ol' RopeCon being a topic of conversation in my household, I can tell you! But thanks to the submitter's wisdom I was thoughtfully steered away from this potentially embarrassing misunderstanding.
Who knows what kind of hilarious, cross-purpose confusion would have arisen on these pages otherwise? They are such similar subjects that no-one could be blamed for confusing the two.
Sorry I work on these systems from time to time and the opportunities to generate energy are few and far between. They only happen when you're down loading weight, the problem with long haul cargo systems is you have to get it up there in the first place, so there really isn't an opportunity to generate any useful amounts of energy.
Nothing to ski here.
Sorry...seriously though, this sounds like a great idea.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
(a) less expensive to build than roads or rail
(b) can be built where roads or rail are problematic (steep vertical ascents/descents)
(c) can be partially (or entirely) powered by gravity
(d) can be operated during heavy snows and floods
Trains probably have an advantage over a long distance, especially over flat terrain. I would think that trains would also have a speed advantage and be somewhat more flexible.
What if, instead of dangling things from ropes and letting them swing around in the wind and such, we put the cargo in boxes on some kind of wheeled support structure that rode on narrow elevated support beams?
The coefficient of rolling friction between steel wheels and a steel support beam is something very very small, 0.001 or such. This has the advantage of keeping the cargo from swinging around so much.
One other improvement would be that, instead of pulling the cargo with a rope, you could make one of these box-on-wheels things that has its own method of locomotion, where it produced the electricity AND the force used to move the cargo. A catchy name for this thing might be "Locomotive" or some other such marketing name.
If you attached all the box-on-wheels things together, let's call them "box cars" to be cute, including the one that produced the electricity and force (Locomotive), then the whole thing moves together as one long train of cars... you could just call the whole thing a "train" to be simple.
I'm glad I talked through this. Which way to the Patent office?
Since you'd probably have to build roads along its path to build it, this is less likely than you might think.
Quite possibly. There are fewer places like that near major poulation/industrial centers than you might think.
You're drifting into perpetual motion machine here. Gravity can only provide energy for such a device if you ship significantly more weight down than up. Which pretty much implies that you're going to run out of weight to move down at some point.
We don't have all that many floods on mountainsides where I come from. I'll grant you the snows though.
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I agree with this. This is where electric cars are headed. It would make much more sense to abandon high-speed rail in favor of some proof of concept installations of something like this.
Cars are the least efficient mode of transport. A city bus, even though it gets terrible mileage per gallon, is more efficient in transporting people than the best hybrid. Plus, left out of the equation of all electric cars is usually the cost of producing the energy to charge the batteries. California is already realizing that to meet their requirements for all electric vehicles will require major upgrades to the power grid and transmission lines.
VW just announced a hybrid that is supposed to get 261mpg. If it succeeds at that, it will almost reach the efficiency of transporting a person that the current city bus does, but is still a long way behind the efficiency per person of Amtrak or the airlines.
No way about it, cars, transporting one or two people will never be an efficient use of energy.
Presumably you live somewhere very flat. Railways can manage only very gentle gradients, and the cost of tunnelling and bridges is enormous. In the early days of rail they experimented with rope haulage on steep gradients to get the trains up. It didn't work for the obvious reason - a train is a lumped load, whereas rope haulage works best for distributed loads.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
sounds like a really expensive train.
I'm surpised the one featured in the movie Get Carter isn't mentioned.
http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj101/hannahmacklin/GetCarterDrinkitall.jpg
http://img.listal.com/image/1349290/936full-get-carter-screenshot.jpg
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I doubt this is practical for general transportation. It works well for short distance moving of cargo from a point source to a staging area, especially when the need for the transportation is temporary such as in Skyline Logging. It's hard to envision this as a permanent solution replacing trains outside of mining or forestry.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/432872
Audi's factory in Germany uses lift to transport cars to the next factory.
generating about 1,300 kWh of braking energy per day
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Gladly took those troll points to point out how extremely stupid the subject matter is: truly a troll technology. Plus all the horrors of grammar mistakes in the bits of the post Timothy is responsible for: " Ski Lifts Can Could Help Get Cargo Traffic Off the Road "... except instead of excerpt.
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Moving something by train doesn't need that many steps, especially today with standard intermodal containers.
Many factories have/had rail heads on site, so it's load the container, put the container on the train, ship to destination railyard, where it's then transfered to a truck via crane for final delivery.
As you mention, it can be human reasons for going away from trains.
I don't read AC A human right
The aerial nature of the ropeway system has the advantage over rough terrain, where roads and rail would have to zig zag through energy robbing country. But because we have already adapted our transportation systems to relatively flat areas, especially long haul expressways, I agree that railroads are better. Really, they are just opposite of one another; trains have wheels on the cars which run on the fixed rail, and the ropeway is a moving "rail" on a fixed set of wheels.
An advantage of the ropeway over the railway is the size of unit transferred; aka packet size and frequency. Railway systems don't adapt well to all the potential uses, the exchange points are extremely inefficient and the rigid one-size-fits-all packet that usually requires a very large often heavy cargo to justify the choice. Ropeway systems offer a smaller, more manageable packet size combined with a higher frequency to achieve a higher throughput. In the ropeway system, new shipping containers are available with high frequency and their delivery time is constant but not all loads can be divided into smaller units.
Why not build a flatbed light rail system? Electric driven, computer routed, flatbeds on rail that could haul individual cars, trucks, delivery trucks or even full size tractor-trailers. Drive into the station, drive on to your individual flatbed cart, use your id and set your destination (cell phone app?). The cart then autonomously pulls into the main line, speeds you to your destination and exits, and you drive off. All that is required is different staging areas to support different vehicle sizes. Carts could be designed to connect and cooperate in such a way where perhaps four smaller car platforms could join to make a truck platform.
For the most part, the freeway system would only need three tracks, one in each direction and a bypass rail for emergencies or high traffic. As mentioned by another poster, it is usually the exchange points that are inefficient; eg. loading/unloading of rail cars, or passengers parking at a metro station and boarding light rail. In this case, you drive on the next available cart and go. Currently, trains as a whole must stop and start to pickup cargo/passengers along the way. The energy loss is tremendous and the patience of the passengers taxed having to stop at every station.
With the flatbed rail system, you get the smaller packet size, higher frequency and constant delivery times afforded by the ropeway system, plus you get the long haul, larger load capability of rail.
Won't anyone think of the rodents?! How many of them are going to have themselves, and generations of their decendants sold into slavery to power this nefarious contraption. How many hamsters have to die in the line of duty to move 10,000 tons of freight?!!?!!
Just wait til PETA gets wind of this!
Roads to built it? Not so much. The support towers can be dropped in by helicopter. Only the wire needs to get put in the whole way and, well, you don't need a road for that.
Perpetual motion? Hardly. RTFA. One example is the gold mine that runs the gold downhill to the refinery. Not only do they not need additional power to run the sky line, they get free electricity.
Many mountain ranges have valleys between peaks that are at risk for flooding.
I think tunnels can help too. no lifting required, just drive through the mountain.
Google for Solvay Process Company Cable Road. It was a "cable road" like a "rail road". Aerial tramway carrying ore from the mine in thbe hills down to the plant pl the flats. Went straight through the top of a hill in a tunnel that's still there.
Firstly, you don't need to build roads to build it, since the ground structures are just towers and power line towers get built all the time without building roads (other than just bulling down the underbrush) along the courseways.
Second, there are many places where roads/rails are problematic, that are near major urban centers, that aren't grades. We usually call them "rivers" but other marshy areas, bays or other impediments fit the bill too.
For the "perpetual motion" comment, the article describes mines that send supplies downhill and generate electricity with the trip, and so unless your line runs the same weight both ways, you have a potential difference you can use. If it does run comparable loads both ways, then gravity powering obviously wouldn't apply.
For your flood comment, see my comment above about building it over a river or other waterway, which would indeed be a problem in flood conditions.
Virg