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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."
It works, you just have to be mindful of what you put in it.
Stereos? Rebar? I guess people will be idiots.
Or what could go right?
If we end up with the (New) New York City from Futurama with transport tubes, I for one will welcome our new Omicron Persei overlords.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Do not put your dick in the trash sucking tube.
I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
So we'll still have to hack the adult bodies into smaller pieces?
Have gnu, will travel.
UDP... I like to live in the moment.
And how is "sorting easier" when it's flying into a "central collection point" (read: steadily growing pile) at 60 mph?
I lived on Roosevelt Island for many years. The trash is sorted in the building by residents (as in all NYC apartment buildings). Recyclables are run through the vacuum system at one time of day, and garbage during another time of day. It does help with the sorting at the collection station.
I know, aren't the NYC subways great?
> I would imagine that large buildings in NYC would require daily pickup
Obviously it's a bit of a special case, but I think the World Trade Center's garbage transfer facility actually kept some engineers busy for a few months planning it back in the late 60s or early 70s. Without getting into the obvious implications of Force = mass x acceleration, where acceleration = 9.8 meters/second per second and the potential energy from a thousand-foot drop, a single tower of the old WTC generated trash during the day faster than trucks could physically back into the loading dock, fill up, and haul it away. Apparently, they were mostly able to keep up until around 10:30am, then the first wave of trash hit from the morning coffee breaks, lunch pushed them into the realm of "hopeless", and they didn't finally catch up and get the system "emptied" again until sometime around 4am (the trash continued well past midnight, because the cleaning crews themselves generated wave after wave of trash).
From what I read, an entire category of trash management came into existence with the World Trade Center, from compaction all the way to heavy-duty trucks capable of dealing with a huge load of densely-packed trash. I believe that some new skyscrapers in China actually have on-site incinerators.
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.