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NYC's Trash-Sucking Tubes May Be Upgraded, Expanded
derekmead writes "When urban planners were trying to turn New York's Roosevelt Island from a haven for the disabled and the mentally ill into a liveable city, they got utopian. Lying beneath their plans was an unusual technology: a series of tubes that literally suck garbage from buildings at speeds up to 60 miles per hour to a central collection point, where the trash is taken off the island by truck or barge. Theoretically, that eliminates the emissions and traffic caused by giant garbage trucks, and makes trash sorting easier. Now, more than thirty years after the 'AVAC,' or Automated Vacuum Collection System, was installed, Envac, the Swedish company that built it, is exploring how to upgrade it and even extend the system to other parts of the city. Under a new feasibility study conducted by City University and funded by two city agencies, the easiest option would be to stretch the current system south, to cover the new technology campuses being built on Roosevelt Island by Cornell University and the Technion. "
You mean like the internet? I don't think we need more tubes that move garbage...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Does this company happen to originate from Zebes?
We already have things close to the drugs, surveillance, and killer robots from THX-1138. Now we can have a consumer too!
Now there's the most efficient way to discard a dismembered body.
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
It works, you just have to be mindful of what you put in it.
Stereos? Rebar? I guess people will be idiots.
the disabled and mentally ill have no place in a livable city.
heres hoping these tubes are retrofitted to transport BMW driving I-Pad thumping yuppie garbage like OP.
Good people go to bed earlier.
But what could go wrong?
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I always knew that NY sucked, just not that it did it literally.
Or were they talking about a different NYC internet provider?
They get rid the pollution caused by garbage trucks by transporting the garbage another way...
Why not build a city wide generic transportation system. We do not need a separate one for every type of object being transported.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Theoretically, that eliminates the emissions and traffic caused by giant garbage trucks, and makes trash sorting easier.
How does the so-called "carbon footprint" of this 24x7x365 sucker compare with once or twice a week garbage trucks?
And how is "sorting easier" when it's flying into a "central collection point" (read: steadily growing pile) at 60 mph?
Or they could use it to transport people.
I work in NYC and it the walk to and from my office off the subway can smell very very awful on days where its hot and there was just a garbage pickup. All I could think was "Why isn't there a better method of collecting trash in the city other than leave it outside to rot till someone picks it up." There arent even trash cans to hold the bags, so all the "garbage juice" collects on the sidewalk and reaks. I couldn't really think of any good easy to implement and maintain methods (and this certainly doesn't sound easy) but I'm impressed someone actually came up with and implemented this system.
NYC's density allows some things to work there that don't work elsewhere. Subways in particular make sense. There is steam heating under the city too (waste heat from power plants?). It's nice to see them working on these kinds of systems; but don't get your hopes up that it's coming to your town. It just doesn't make sense unless you have some density. Subways and steam pipes are in other cities; but this kind of trash removal might require considerable density before it makes economic sense. I wonder if it even made sense when it was built. It might have been a test case, and it might only make sense to expand on it now because the core infrastructure is already a sunk cost.
...is about to become reality.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Tubes May Be Upgraded, Expanded
I for one welcome Tubes 2.0!
Do not put your dick in the trash sucking tube.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
Did anyone else find TFA highly disappointing? I wanted to see the system - pictures from inside the tubes, video from where the stuff gets dumped out, technical details, demos of the system... it sounds cool! Instead, there was a fluff piece with almost no information content.
Blah.
Paris was famous for its system of pneumatic tubes used for mail delivery. The system was automated, with colour coded bands used for routing, some systems used electromagnet propulsion. If this garbage system works half so well,it will be great. I don't see anything about recycling or composting though. That's bad. There is a great article on it here: http://www.cix.co.uk/~mhayhurst/jdhayhurst/pneumatic/book1.html
I believe it can be done properly, but all I've seen from trash tubes are disgustingly dirty chutes that could not be properly cleaned and tended to attract cockroaches and the like. Either by accident (like a trash bag ripping inside the tube) or by improper use, they tend to become dirty and are impracticable to clean. Water pipes work because, well, there's water running on them. And trash cans, if they eventually become dirty, can be moved to be cleaned or at least replaced.
Here in France, most (if not all) buildings that have some sort of garbage chute are forbidden to use them, precisely for the lack of hygiene they represent when improperly used. You really need some obligatory hard casing to prevent the trash from spilling into the tube itself. Vaccum can help, but some nasty liquids are quite sticky once they touch the walls...
i thought vacuum tubes were outdated
Just don't get it mixed up with the Subway.
http://www.envacgroup.com/MediaBinaryLoader.axd?MediaArchive_FileID=06b88c4f-5764-43f7-8f14-e86e31483755&FileName=FAQ+Stationary+vacuum+systems+March+2012.pdf&MediaArchive_ForceDownload=True&Time_Stamp=634757542565749136
If you're interested in the system itself, the company that makes the system offers this neat PDF presentation on its website.
It works quite well. I lived on the island for many years.
eastwood! ... and the maintenence is HORRIFIC. for all the money I paid in rent $2850 a month! they NEVER fixed the busted up walkways that elderly would trip in, they just took and took and took.
And the buildings are ass ugly like east block ass ugly.
They should just burn the thing down, and try again.
Seriously, that's what OP just said.
New York also had pneumatic mail tubes. They were ultimately abandoned with the advent of reasonable-speed bulk transit via motor vehicle. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a series of mail trucks cruising down the street - especially when they operate outside of rush hour for much of the time.
When people throw their garbage down the trash chutes, it piles up for several hours, until a trapdoor opens, sucking the waste into a big underground pipe. Then a complex system of air valves propels the garbage through the pipe at speeds of up to sixty miles per hour. When the trash resurfaces at the Avac center, a squat building at the northern tip of the island, it is dumped into two silo-shaped cyclones, where it is spun like cotton candy and then whooshed down chutes into huge containers.
Okay: trash chutes, I get. Trapdoors, big underground pipe, series of air valves? No problemo, obviously we'll need all of those things. Dumped into two silo-shaped cyclones? Naturally. Wooshing it down (more) chutes into huge containers: of course.
But spinning the trash like cotton candy before the last step is where I draw the line! That's simply gratuitous. What were the protoype, pre-final chute/huge container designs: slushee constant mix machine? Season the garbage with bay leaves and slow cook it for 8-12 hours in a giant crockpot? Push it off a ledge like a coin-pusher arcade machine? Roll it into a ball and run it through a life-size model of the animated pinball machine from the Pointer Sisters/Electric Company 1-2-3-4-5, 6-7-8-9-10, 11-12 song?
Dammit Swedes, how did you manage to make trash collection so fun?
Methane would build up in the tubes, causing the potential for an explosion and whatever system "deals" with it can break down.
Certain animals would easily take refuge in the tubes and catch ridiculous amounts of diseases. With thousands of entrances and exits, that's a bad idea not to mention that it'd be a route directly into a building or house (potentially).
Then someone could break into the system anywhere and drop in poisonous gas that can get past methane and disease focusing blocking techniques and spread it to every building. .
Are those things a major problem for the sewer system?
There is more risk the water supply will be poisoned than the "garbage sewer". The garbage tubes also suck air, so unless someone rewires the system to reverse there is no threat of gas to come out of the residential tubes.
It'd have to be piston driven from behind because no velocity of air can dislodge certain viscosity materials and no reasonable air pressure can move heavy metals.
Your speculations are rendered moot by the fact that this system has been operating successfully for 35 years now.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Mod parent up. It's incredibly silly to claim something is impossible when it's already been done successfully for decades.
Why not extend the system to carry all kinds of freight? It would be awesome to resupply stores, deliver packages, and the like the same way. It would dramatically cut the truck traffic in the city, with all the noise, pollution, and traffic they create. It's probably even safer, from a security standpoint, to have an expertly monitored system like that than a hundred thousand random vans, delivery trucks, and semis running around.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
Sucks hard and full of garbage.
"Trash-Sucking Tubes" sounds like a good name for a rock band.
Proverbs 21:19
I love the idea, I think pneumatics are a often forgotten technology that has quite a few uses. But I'm a bit wary as to whether it is being implemented for the right reasons. Sure it will cut emissions from vehicles (truck/barge) but would that offset the emissions from the power required for the suction system, or the installation of the piping? There are a lot of good reasons for a pneumatic transit system (traffic, security, efficiency, etc), but are emissions one of them?
"drop in poisonous gas that"
I can only imagine one possible situation where a pneumatic garbage system could be used to do something like this. If "bad guys" took over the suction plant and reversed the flow to pump some kind of explosive/toxic gas into the system. That issue and most of the other noted "dangers" could be solved by the simple inclusion of a $5 unidirectional check valve at every house/business (and maybe a few larger ones every block for extra measure) which would make it extremely difficult for any nefarious use of the system or animal traffic.
I guess it bares repeating...it's not a big truck....it's a series of tubes!
Mod parent up. It's incredibly silly to claim something is impossible when it's already been done successfully for decades.
Ummm..."We have always been at war with Oceania"
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Some of us are interested in making sure that doesn't become a reality, and that means correcting misinformation. The claim was made that it could not work. It was pointed out that it has already worked. That it has worked is not a case of altering history. It's fact. That means it's important to repeat it and correct claims to the contrary.