UK Company Wants To Deliver Parcels Through Underground Tunnels

Zothecula writes Drones flown by Amazon aren't the only way we could be getting our parcels delivered in the near future. UK firm Mole Solutions is exploring the possibility of using small robot trains running on underground tracks to manage deliveries, and it's just received funding from the British government to help test the viability of the proposal.

Comments

Pneumatic post

[Anonymous Coward]

Pneumatic post anyone?

Re:Pneumatic post

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, or maybe this?

Re:Pneumatic post

[Anonymous Coward]

Dilbert jumped shark aeon ago

Re:Pneumatic post

[fahrbot-bot]

Pneumatic post anyone?

Everything will work fine until something, like an explosion, happens. Then the system will suffer from post-pneumatic stress syndrome.

Re:Pneumatic post

[MarkRose]

Thank you for a megapascal of a laugh :D

Re:Pneumatic post

[sysrammer]

You win the internet today.

Re:Pneumatic post

[fahrbot-bot]

You win the internet today.

Thanks Chris Hardwick - FTW was fun. :-)

Been done-ish

[Anonymous Coward]

http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-61-a-series-of-tubes/

Also, I believe the drug guys from Mexico were using a system much like this. Probably got prior art ;)

Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

The Royal Mail were doing this across London years ago - linking major sorting offices with an underground network of tunnels and trains - go google for it. Nothing new to see here.

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Government enterprise is socialism and therefore invalid.

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[davester666]

Yes.

If it could be done profitably, private enterprise must do it instead
If it is done for a loss, it must be terminated
It it breaks even, mess with it until one of the above rules can be applied.

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[davester666]

Of course, this is the best kind of project.

Where private enterprise is paid by the gov't to determine if a project is profitable.

If it is, great, they'll do it, preferably with some kind of startup grant from the gov't to make sure they can make a go of it.
If it isn't, great, didn't cost them anything and they can spend the last of the money for thinking of some new idea the gov't can pay them to investigate.

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[symes]

Here you go. My understanding is that London is full of all sorts of tunnels built for various purposes. From the huge Victorian era sewage system to the London Underground and various utility tunnels. Chatting to engineers, one of the issues they have building anything in London is that often you'll encounter some uncharted tunnel. Odd though this may sound, I have exploring London's underground tunnels on my bucket list.

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[Roodvlees]

Sometimes government take the risk for experimenting with new technology. You don't always want to wait for investors to come up with the money. Especially when you're going to be drilling holes in people's land, it's good to have government support.

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[Hognoxious]

If you were using the sewers you'd presumably need some kind of submarine. There's also the minor problem of it getting totally covered in shite to contend with.

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently NY is the same way. They can not dig without hitting something.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/streetworks/assets/chapter_2/img_2_1a.jpg
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/streetworks/html/chapter_2/2_1.shtml

It is kind of fascinating to see how 'wild west' it used to be. I am sure most major cities it is the same way. I heard Seattle and Chicago are quite interesting once you get under the road.

London I have heard is a bit more grisly sometimes as they run across a mass graves from the black death.

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[Sir_Eptishous]

You should have told China that, say, about 30 years ago...

Re:Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[gzuckier]

Government enterprise is socialism and therefore invalid.

Only in republics, silly. In a monarchy, government enterprise is private property, of the monarch.

Re: Royal Mail - Doing it in London years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

This isn't Fovernment enterprise, it is the government funding research. Does this not happen in the U.S. .

Prior Art

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought we already had it and have had since 1927 (well until it closed)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway

Re:Prior Art

[hattig]

And don't forget that before that, from the 1860s in fact, there was a pneumatic parcel delivery railway between Euston and major depots.

http://www.londonreconnections...

What happens in case of fire?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know someone is going to ship a battery.

Re:What happens in case of fire?

[jones_supa]

A huge blast of fire quickly scorches through the entire tunnel and destroys the whole business.

Re:What happens in case of fire?

[AmiMoJo]

People ship batteries by air all the time, and we don't get aircraft raining down from the skies.

Royal Mail

[Anonymous Coward]

In London, Royal Mail did this until recently with normal snail mail.

Expensive

[Neil Boekend]

Digging tunnels under cities is expensive. I won't say it's a bad plan, quite on the contrary, but it'll be expensive to get the tunnels in place.
I would love to see it work, motor vehicles in inner cities is a bad plan and this would make it possible to eliminate trucks from the inner city. After that making the roads bike and walk only is just a small step.

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

From the other posts, it sounds like the infrastructure is already there. I guess a company just wants to buy public property on the cheap and monetize it since the government is not doing it.

Re:Expensive

[jklovanc]

The infrastructure is only partially there in a small part of London. They are proposing to use maglev which would require replacing the track. It looks like the want to do it in other places where they would need to bore their own tunnels.

Re:Expensive

[jrumney]

The London Mail trains are basically running between the mail sorting centres and the major rail stations (for mail going and coming from London) and major post offices (for within central London). Unless Royal Mail also rents this company space in those locations for setting up their distribution network, their existing network is not going to be much use for them.

Re:Expensive

[swb]

When they build tunnels for trains now, don't they use those giant boring machines that excavacte the tunnel and line it with concrete now? The machines I think are giant not because of the digging itself but because they're usually boring a tunnel big enough to run a parallel set of subway-sized cars through. Add in cathedral-sized chambers for regular stops and its easy to see why its so expensive.

What would happen if they scaled that same excavation technology down so that the tunnel was something like 2 meters in diamater for a miniature train capable of just carrying parcels? The trains could run on rubber wheels following the tunnel. The cars could be flatbeds that carry miniature containers which could be inserted and removed via basically elevator shafts that grabbed them from above, eliminating the need for significant excavations for stations.

Powering it would be another issue, but maybe they could be powered by battery packs swapped at container insertion points or some kind of induction power cable pulled through the tunnel.

Re:Expensive

[nospam007]

"What would happen if they scaled that same excavation technology down so that the tunnel was something like 2 meters in diamater for a miniature train..."

The word you're searching for is a 'mine'.

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that what we all need is literately a "reverse sewer"

Be it pnumatic tubes or it's Hyperloop cousin, if we built these things into high-denstity infrastructure, there needs to be some safegaurds to prevent things like bombs,live animals/pests, and infectious diseases from being transported, contanminating or shutting down busy sections of it.

But then again we could use something closer to a hub and spoke system. Sewers rely on gravity and the occasional pump to get stuff out of the city, so they run along roads towards water. This mini-rail-parcel system could be designed so that it has concentric circles with express points to the centers that run deeper. the exit points would be roughly every 50 meters under whichever apartment/condo/office is closest into a "bunker" in the parking garage level.

There would be special packaging materials.

At a state, national and international level ... well it give smuggling a whole new name. Forget paying 800$ for an airplane ticket, just pack an O2 tank and a pee bag.

Re:Expensive

[Neil Boekend]

One of the problems with digging tunnels in a city is that it causes the ground to settle. Even with modern systems that have only little vibration and only little risk of caving in between the drill head and the tunnel wall.
If the ground drops even 10 cm on one side of a building, what do you think happens with it?

Re:Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the university of cambridge have abunch of sensors installed in a disused london Underground station as the new cross rail tunnel is passing only a few meters (I think 2) below it and they wanted to carry out precise analysis of exactly how much stress is or snt caused by the tunned boring passing beneath the precast steel sections that make up the skin of the present excavation

Re:Expensive

[xaxa]

Bored railway tunnels are only single-track, usually with two parallel bores. Here are some good photos, I believe the "cathedral"-sized cavern was built by digging down from ground level. The finished tunnel diameter is 6.1m.

The London Post Office Railway has 2.7m tunnels, so is pretty much what you want. It was shut down after the introduction of the Congestion Charge, since that removed enough traffic that it was then cheaper to use surface vehicles.

Re:Expensive

[jklovanc]

Agreed

Re:Expensive

[minstrelmike]

Digging tunnels is difficult. Chicago is so flat that in order to put in the first sewer system, they decided it was cheaper to raise every building in the city 10 feet (~3 meters).

Re:Expensive

[minstrelmike]

"What would happen if they scaled that same excavation technology down so that the tunnel was something like 2 meters in diamater for a miniature train..."

The word you're searching for is a 'mine'.

Or for smaller diameter holes, there are things called oil drills (that can be drilled sideways).

So sad :(

[serviscope_minor]

The post office used to have an underground railway in London for shuffling things between some of the major sorting offices. It got closed down because "it was cheaper to use vans".

It was cheaper of course if you considered the roads to be free and the extra traffic to cost nothing (which is how most people operate). Nice to see the government using its vast size to actually take a holistic view and consider all factors for once.

But no, instead they decided it was cheaper to dump a bunch of extra traffic on an area notorious for congestion to save money. Brilliant!

I don't even remember which government and I can't be arsed to lookit up becuse it makes no difference. Both the major parties are as dumb as each other.

Re:So sad :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to see the government using its vast size to actually take a holistic view and consider all factors for once.

But no, instead they decided it was cheaper to dump a bunch of extra traffic on an area notorious for congestion to save money. Brilliant!

I don't even remember which government and I can't be arsed to lookit up becuse it makes no difference. Both the major parties are as dumb as each other.

I know you're trying to take a swipe a government for this, but please remember that the Royal Mail has been operated as a private organisation for a long time now (even if it's only relatively recently that the government actually sold off the shares), so it wasn't a "government" decision to close thse mail tunnels; it was a private commercial decision. And frankly, as a commercial decision, it was a no-brainer -- those rail tunnels can't be cheap to operate. They also mean that you can't easily relocate your sorting offices if you wanted to.

Re:So sad :(

[oodaloop]

Both the major parties are as dumb as each other.

I disagree. Only one of them is as dumb as the other.

Re:So sad :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop making sense. The pragmatic realities of threatening to relocate when dealing with unions has a holistic value that can't be measured if you only evaluate the problem as a question of engineering & physics.

Capital investments in efficiency gains attract organized labor like flies to rotting meat. The only place where it's safe to store expensive equipment and infrastructure are in old established political machines where there is a surplus of cheap labor and immigrants to operate.

How do you think Detroit became such an industrial capital? I mean, other than the Great Lakes obviously...

Re:So sad :(

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that the safety systems required for enclosed spaces are cheaper than the open air? I smell bullshit.

Re:So sad :(

[serviscope_minor]

I know you're trying to take a swipe a government for this, but please remember that the Royal Mail has been operated as a private organisation for a long time now (even if it's only relatively recently that the government actually sold off the shares), so it wasn't a "government" decision to close thse mail tunnels; it was a private commercial decision.

Well, it was a really fucking stupid idea (tm) to privatise the Royal Mail. Even the Republicans haven't been big enough dumbasses to privatise the USPS. Nonetheless, the rail line was closed in 2003, and the Royal Mail was fully privatised in 2010.

And frankly, as a commercial decision, it was a no-brainer -- those rail tunnels can't be cheap to operate. They also mean that you can't easily relocate your sorting offices if you wanted to.

And that's why it's monumentally idiotic to operate a major piece of infrastructure as a private organisation, because things that are better for the "bottom line" of the organisation are detremental to others outside it.

Anyway you say it was a "no brainer". The First thing they did when becoming partly corporate was to take possible the most recognised brand in the entire UK and change it to some crap called "Consignia PLC". Which was such a monumentally idiotic decision that after spending millions on the rebrand, they had to re-brand again as the Royal Mail.

Re:So sad :(

[serviscope_minor]

I disagree. Only one of them is as dumb as the othere

Nice :)

Well, we're now getting a proliferation of parties, so they should be some stiff competition in the stupidity stakes.

Re:So sad :(

[kqs]

Well, it was a really fucking stupid idea (tm) to privatise the Royal Mail. Even the Republicans haven't been big enough dumbasses to privatise the USPS.

To be fair, the USPS is specified in the constitution as a government-run institution, so it would take some very creative legislation.

And in some ways I wish they had made it a private company. Right now, due to the republicans, the USPS receives no federal money, but must pre-pay pension funds for decades in advance.

But yeah, I want a government-run postal service. I want a service that will be there for everyone, not just people in big cities, or rich people, or whatever subset "makes shareholders more money".

Re:So sad :(

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to see tunnels like these used at ports. We have hundreds of large trucks, typically with the worst emission controls, used to haul shipping containers from the port to distribution centers between 300 yards and 5 miles away, in my city.

Re:So sad :(

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

To be fair, the USPS is specified in the constitution as a government-run institution, so it would take some very creative legislation.

Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: "To establish Post Offices and post Roads;"

There's absolutely nothing in there that requires it to be run by the government. The USPS could easily be spun off as a private company. In fact, in some ways, it is already; it's not a government agency like the FCC or EPA, it's a government-sponsored corporation, legally separate from fed.gov.

Return of the old

[hackertourist]

London Pneumatic Dispatch Company or London Post Office Railway

Re:Return of the old

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, unfortunately many people think that just because something isn't been done, means it hasn't been done in the past and stopped.
The thing about underground tunnels though, they collect water. Let's hope the trains are waterproof.

Re:Return of the old

[ledow]

Was going to say the same thing.

This isn't new. London, espcially Central London (as opposed to Greater London which is about 30 miles in radius), is crawling with tunnels dug for underground lines that were then abandoned, or repurposed - and some of them were operated by the Post Office for exactly this purpose.

Strange how the old gets reinvented as "new".

The problem you have is that London is only a tiny, tiny, tiny portion of what you have to deal with in the UK. And it's already well-catered for in transport, post offices, courier firms, etc. precisely because it's so dense.

Come even a couple of miles outside of central London though and you still need a hundred guys in vans driving around and dropping parcels over fences. There's no escaping it.

If the Post Office tunnels were so useful, they wouldn't have been abandoned - it's not like delivery of post to/from London has ever stopped since we introduced the first ever postage stamp.

Re:Return of the old

[ledow]

And I have to say, the most relevant line on Wikipedia is this:

"Royal Mail had earlier stated that using the railway was five times more expensive than using road transport for the same task. The Communication Workers Union claimed the actual figure was closer to three times more expensive but argued that this was the result of a deliberate policy of running the railway down and using it at only one-third of its capacity"

If even the unions are saying it's three times more expensive, there's a problem.

And, to be honest, I really don't want my post subject to both postal AND train-driver strikes, thanks very much. They already have had several months off for the past few years just by striking over pay while they earn more than I can ever hope to earn.

The beauty of Amazon was that they hired random people to deliver Amazon parcels in their cars late at night and thus avoided the whole Post Office "We tried to deliver your parcel at 9am but, strangely, you weren't home.... you can collect it from the post office 20 miles from you or your workplace at any time between 9-5 Mon-Fri".

Re:Return of the old

[AmiMoJo]

Apparently those random people get as little as 50p per package. It's not really sustainable, Amazon is simply relying on there being a supply of people desperate enough to try it for a while before realizing they can't make a living out of Amazon deliveries. Same with their warehouses, they just burn through employees.

Re:Return of the old

[ledow]

How much does a DVD cost to post using the Royal Mail?

Not that much more and they'll send it from London to Scotland on your behalf too. These guys pick up from local warehouses and deliver in their home street and surrounding roads.

I don't argue that it's probably not much more than a minimum-wage job but all the drivers I spoke to were more than happy with it - flexible hours, paid by how many you can take and successfully (and reliably) deliver, can do it after work, with the kids on the school run, throughout the day, etc.

How much does my local paper-delivery boy get per house her delivers to? Probably a damn pittance. But he can do a road on foot in ten minutes and make a wage worth him getting up at 4am for.

Re:Return of the old

[Anonymous Coward]

i lived in the sussex countryside in the 1980's and a neighbour collected all the papers for our "hamlet" (weell really a ribbon of houses) they would collect in bulk and then put in all the suplements etc and then I would deliver half in one direction form their house and my brother the other half (basically a big newspaper bag each), I belief they were paid 3p per paper which was the difference between wholesale and retail price and they had to pay us £1.50 out of that (between us)

Re:Return of the old

[serviscope_minor]

If even the unions are saying it's three times more expensive, there's a problem.

Eh, well, the government used to run the Royal Mail and the decision was less clear. If you look at the costs locally, then sure the railway is more expensive than using the roads. However, how much does it cost the economy due to increased congestion? London is already heavily congested so anything that reduces it is pretty much a net win.

Of course now it's private there's no chance of sensible decisions being made.

And, to be honest, I really don't want my post subject to both postal AND train-driver strikes, thanks very much.

You do realise it was always a driverless train, right?

"We tried to deliver your parcel at 9am but, strangely, you weren't home.... you can collect it from the post office 20 miles from you or your workplace at any time between 9-5 Mon-Fri".

They'll also send it from the sorting office where it's being held to your nearest branch. Given it's over an hour round trip on foot to the plaec that holds the parcels, I figured I'd splash out on the 70p needed to pick it up from the end of the road a good two minutes walk away.

Re:Return of the old

[ledow]

First point - granted. But if no private company has picked it up in the meantime, it's probably because it's just not profitable.

Last train driver strike, the signallers went out on strike too in sympathy. It's not as simple, once things are unionised.

My sorting office is my local branch. Which is 2 miles away (20 was hyperbole for effect), has no parking, has a local glut of traffic wardens even on weekends (precisely because there's no parking) and is only open between 11am and 4pm Mon-Fri and 9-11am Saturday. Guess when the world and their brother decide to collect their parcels, needing to have their ID checked, etc. forming more than a 2-hour queue?

Your options (according to the little note they pop through) are delivery to another address (same restrictions), redelivery to the same address at the same times (and a maximum of twice before they give up), or collection at the times above. That's it.

And that's if they are post-office parcels and not ParcelForce - who have similar but different restrictions and locations - or some random third-party courier (who are generally even worse and one of them is 8 miles from me and charge for redelivery!).

And I guarantee that you've heard of the town I live in, inside the M25, serviced by several underground stations (also between 1-2 miles from me) and lines.

Amazon lockers? Last time I used one, it was in a petrol station late at night with no security and nobody around. Sod that for anything of value.

AmazonCollect? The last time I went to a newsagent that was supposed to be part of that, they knew nothing about it and didn't have my parcel and the other time I used it, that newsagent refused to accept my parcel for Amazon Return that Amazon themselves (on the phone) had said I could do from that newsagent.

By comparison, I'd rather pay just about anything to get someone to come to my house of an evening with the parcel or - better - ring first.

In the last year or so, though, I've been at a workplace that is manned 24/7 and allows staff to have personal parcels delivered there. Solves no end of problems, but no thanks to Amazon, the Post Office or any delivery company. And we still get hassle because some things companies will refuse to deliver to business premises!

Re:Return of the old

[serviscope_minor]

First point - granted. But if no private company has picked it up in the meantime, it's probably because it's just not profitable.

Yeah, it's not profitable because someone ELSE is paying for the roads and the congestion cost. If you're the government then YOU are paying for it. So if you save money at the cost of increased congestion, you've almost certainly damped down the economy a bit and actually lost money.

Last train driver strike, the signallers went out on strike too in sympathy. It's not as simple, once things are unionised.

Well, maybe but is there ever a recorded instance of the line going down due to a strike? I thought that driverless implied automated.

Anyway sounds likle you have a whole host of awkward problems with regard to delivery,. including a rather distant local post office. Are you sure there's no one closer? Sometimes they hide in little convenience stores. They'll redeliver them to those locations as well.

I'm not arguing against having someone deliver at a time one is actually in. That would be useful.

This won't pay: system in London closed in 2003

[Chrisq]

Until 2003 the royal mail used an underground mail railway. Even though the costs of building the tunnels had been paid off it was five times more expensive than using road transport for the same task. I can't see how any system involving new tunnels could possibly be viable.

Re:This won't pay: system in London closed in 2003

[jrumney]

There was no congestion charge in 2003.

Re:This won't pay: system in London closed in 2003

[Chrisq]

There was no congestion charge in 2003.

True, but since they say it cost five times a much to send things by the rail compared by road this would only swing the balance if 4/5 of the cost were the congestion charge. In other words it would have to cost four times as much as the driver's salary, fuel, maintenance, and vehicle costs - which it obviously doesn't

I guess nobody saw the movie

[Anonymous Coward]

brazil

Re:I guess nobody saw the movie

[prefec2]

Maybe that is where this inspiration comes from. Sadly, they did not get the joke. So they thought it is an idea to implement.

It sounds good until

[Anonymous Coward]

... UK firm Mole Solutions ...

It sounds good until one realizes they're asking for a natural monopoly. If there were some way to thread it inside existing infrastructure, such as the Metro, it wouldn't matter. Until then, leave it to a government arm such as Royal Mail.

Re:It sounds good until

[andrewbaldwin]

leave it to a government arm such as Royal Mail.

Except that Royal Mail was given away to chums in the city recently in a botched privatisation.

15 years ago

[bickerdyke]

I remember company presentations that announced exactly such a system, but I never saw it acutally build.

It may be viable in newly build neighborhoods if you can build the freight tunnel along with all other underground works.

Re:15 years ago

[ledow]

On this note, I have always wondered why new-towns aren't like this.

Every time you run a road, stick a tunnel underneath, or beside it. Or one tunnel each side.

You have to run, presumably, at least sewers, electricity, gas, water, street lighting, traffic control, telephone, Internet etc. already so why not build it all in and put a tunnel through it too.

Done properly, you'd never have to dig up a road to get to the services you require and all maintenance can take place underneath the road.

Sure, it adds to the cost initially but it MUST save on cost within just a year or two.

And you instantly know that if you are on or near that road, it's trivial to hook in to any known service.

If we ever "started over", and I were in charge, I would enforce it. You build a road, path or other highway designated as public? Then you have to put in a large service tunnel, all the utilities (or capacity for them without disturbing the road) for the entire length of anything classed as "public highway" (i.e. a serviced street of any size).

Then your Internet connections are as redundant and routeable as your transport links, telecoms network, power distribution, etc. And just as you could "go around the block" if there was one particular road out, you could re-route all the other utilities (maybe not every time, because of capacity etc. but the majority of time surely?). And you'd not have to dig up a road except to MAINTAIN that road. Not every utility, service, pipe, duct or cable that might happen to be under it. And if you built the service tunnel properly and laid rail in it, there's nothing stopping you running a piggy-back service on your service routes to take the occasional train of parcels or whatever with you.

The Romans knew the road system was their best weapon - everywhere they went, they built roads, every time the road was too small to cope with traffic, they expanded it. No more different to how ants lay down scent and route to places. Why should we be having multiple, different, overlapping service networks at all? Stick them all together and then you know you can always put a box by the side of the road, don't have to dig up the countryside just to run a bit of power (if you do HAVE to, you certainly also need all the other services and a road that way too anyway!). And in the same way that roads join industrial, commercial, and residential, you can site your ugly equipment away from people's houses but still service those same houses.

I never got why we ever had one cable crossing over a street or not following the existing road network.

Re:15 years ago

[gl4ss]

because when you build a new city, there's no money at first to do such a thing.

when there's money to do it due to having enough density, then it's too late.

if there's shitloads of money and the tunnel becomes necessary, then it's done(like in any big city in the west it is done).

Re:15 years ago

[andrewbaldwin]

Where's the fun in that?

I completely agree with the idea (and can even claim earlier art in an essay I wrote when still at school [MANY years ago] on reducing traffic accidents).

I swear that my local council is an underground* anarchist cell**.

If I wanted to cause traffic jams and major disruption I would be hard pushed to do better than the current scheduling of concurrent major roadworks on the three main roads through/out of the town - and, tight fisted and risk averse as I am, I'd be willing to bet that within twelve months of a new surface being laid they'd be dug up again.

On a related theme, a few years back there were supposed to be incentives for the utility companies to coordinate work (eg if the road were dug up for gas repairs, then making changes to water or other pipes nearby at the same time would be encouraged) but I guess the benefits of going it alone were greater for the utilities than reduced costs of road closure/restriction permits.

*pun unintentional - but appropriate :-)

** or full of old grumps who are just getting their revenge for all the times they've been forced to queue in the past

Re:15 years ago

[ColdWetDog]

Tunnels are expensive and cranky of maintenance. It's why municipalities don't build Roman-Era quality roads with 10 feet of grading and hand packed rocks that last 1000 years.

It's called a budget. An extraordinarily annoying concept.

Re:15 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Same in my town ( a Labour council like I assume yours is ). My council also:

Dug up a major road and made the bus stops in the middle of the traffic, and built barriers so you can't go around the busses.

When a major roundabout's traffic lights ( ! ) were broken, it magically fixed congestion. The council reported that they'd noticed it, so they put the traffic lights back up.

The tories are promising to get rid of both of these, but I doubt they'll get voted in because people will stupidly vote Labour because their grandad did.

Re:15 years ago

[andrewbaldwin]

Sadly stupidity is not confined to any party.

Where I live you could get a gorilla elected if it had a blue rosette.

Better than drones!

[EzInKy]

Revisiting underground tube systems is a far better idea than letting anybody and his uncle fly drones over the publics head.

Re:Better than drones!

[gnupun]

It's also a lot cheaper than drones (once the high cost of building the tunnels has been paid). Rail like systems are way more fuel efficient than drones which consume energy proportional to their weight and the weight of their payloads just to stay above ground. That's not feasible in a modern world where there is a constant shortage of energy.

shit

[Anonymous Coward]

We already deliver shit by tunnels, every house has a tunnel in place already.

Fixes wrong problem

[monkeyxpress]

The main problem with freight logistics is not getting all your parcels into a central city depot (this is largely done at night anyway). It is getting the small parcels from the depot to all the various houses and businesses spread throughout the urban area during business hours. Unfortunately the only real solution to that second issue is to have a whole bunch of people hand delivering the packages who can ring door bells, climb stairs etc. But what these mole people have done is ignored this hard bit and said 'hey people can just walk down to the depot and their package will get whizzed away using magnets!'. But I don't want to spend 30 mins walking to and from the depot. I want someone to deliver the package to my door so I can keep working.

Personally I think the most likely solution will be autonomous milk cart type things that drive around to your house and message you so you can go out and retrieve your parcel from them. They don't need to be fast if they can be smaller and there can be more of them. Drones have a lot of issues in urban areas (where are they going to leave your package?) but could be a great solution for rural situations.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to spend 30 mins walking to and from the depot.

I want someone to deliver the package to my door so I can keep working.

Even if someone does deliver it to your door, you're still going to have to go to the depot anyway: they're going to deliver while you're not at home, as always.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[EzInKy]

As long as it isn't drones buzzing over my property I'm for it.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[Neil Boekend]

I want somewhere I can pick up my parcel at a time convenient to me. Luckily we have that here in the Netherlands. I can have the packet send to my supermarket and then I can go get it with my next shopping trip. No need to stay at home for a simple delivery.
Sadly Amazon doesn't work with it yet so I have to have that send to my work address.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[Livius]

Even if someone does deliver it to your door, you're still going to have to go to the depot anyway: they're going to claim to have attempted to deliver while you're not at home, as always.

Fixed that for you.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds pretty similar to Amazon's Amazon Locker where they have lockers in convenience stores and other locations that you can have them deliver to and they give you a pin to unlock it.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[BitterOak]

Even if someone does deliver it to your door, you're still going to have to go to the depot anyway: they're going to claim to have attempted to deliver while you're not at home, as always.

Fixed that for you.

Since they generally leave a note on the door, I assume they actually did make a delivery attempt.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[VendettaMF]

I can't speak for the Americas, but in Ireland, the UK and China the general practise is not to bother bringing the parcels out, but instead to just bring the (lying) notes and leave those in the box/doorframe if there is no answer. Or more often, without even knocking.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[Anonymous Coward]

They have these in most countries post offices, they're called PO Boxes, or for larger volume of delivery Post bags.

Re:Fixes wrong problem

[Neil Boekend]

Hardly. PO boxes require having a PO box. That costs money. This in included in the cost of delivery (it's cheaper for the postal company).

I can see it now

[Anonymous Coward]

I can see it now, my package being lost underground where no man dare set foot.

Freight on the underground

[Anonymous Coward]

I am surprised that there is not freight on the underground - there is space in the time table for it (outside the rush hours).

Re:Freight on the underground

[bre_dnd]

In Berlin, after the war, trams were used to haul freight.

Re:Freight on the underground

[ledow]

There was for a while. The post office had their own lines.

But it's so prohibitively expensive and you still have to do vehicle/hand delivery to/from both ends anyway, that it was abandoned.

London gave up this idea nearly a decade ago and for the last two decades, it was expensive and unviable and they knew it (unions stuck their noses in).

Trains just aren't practical when you have to get the parcels to the track, load them on, pay for the track and train, move the train against other train schedules, arrive at another station, unload the parcels, load them onto vehicles or delivery guys, who then have to go and take them to their destination.

London is only 30 miles in radius and that's Greater London (not all of which is serviced by underground). The central city? It's also viable to walk across it delivering parcels as you go, but mopeds seem to be the most popular method of delivery. Outside the core, vans can carry more, only need to be loaded once, can make the same journey in a handful of minutes, and deliver parcels as they go.

Some great ideas worked back when we didn't have ubiquitous transport. They're not such great ideas now.

Best idea since sliced bread

[prefec2]

Yes all these drones flying through the air dropping parcels on peoples heads. That is definitely not the future. The future are small tunnels beneath the cities which transport all the goods to the homes. True it works best in densely populated areas, but who doesn't? And in those remote areas the parcel head problem would be limited. So that is the niche for drones. Tunnels and tubes is definitely the best solution. Look at the movie Brasil. A whole society can thrive on such system. True it is just a dystopian movie, but for ./ that should suffice as solid evidence. Beside digging tunnels is not that expensive.

Seriously, tunnels? Not again. I had one of those future books from the sixties when I was young (in the 1980s) and they proposed that idea already. So it is not new, but is is flipping expensive. A better solution is a multi model transportation system. For example trams can deliver parcels to certain drop of places. In Dresden (yes that's where those semi-Nazis hang around in Germany), VW uses trams to transport goods between different locations, which they only do because it is more efficient than trucks. So the same can be done with parcels. From there parcels can either be delivered to those parcel robot stations (http://www.paketda.de/dhl/packstation-befuellen.jpg) by unmanned electric vehicles or you use delivery vehicles (smaller than the present ones) for door to door delivery. You could even allow people to tell the service when they are at home. Until then the parcel is stored at the tram parcel drop off station.

Re:Best idea since sliced bread

[coofercat]

Water and gas are delivered by 'tunnel' and they seem to work just fine. If you think of this as a refinement of that, then it makes a lot more sense. If they need to dig human-safe tunnels, then yeah, it's going to get expensive, but a "fat pipe" network seems pretty simple. The things that go up and down oil pipelines prove that we can have machines in pipes doing jobs for us, so I'm sure moving some boxes around is quite possible.

That said, I seriously doubt we'll all have a chute outside our house where we drop off or collect things. I guess the local shop might have one, but even then I doubt it. Some sort of depot network could work, and I guess each depot could be small so long as there was a hulking big warehouse somewhere nearby. The thing is, you wouldn't want to rent your depots because you can't move to alternative premises if the landlord jacks up the rent, so that means buying property which is expensive (at least up front). It could scale, but it's got a huge upfront investment and as Doddle (https://doddle.it) are finding, the 'depot' model isn't actually all that compelling and competing in a market where price is king isn't easy.

How did old slashdot survive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because every thread on slashdot mentioned that the new beta version was terrible and nobody wanted it.

Time to turn every thread on every internet forum into a discussion on how the new Google Maps is a piece of s**t.

Does Old Google Maps have these tunnels?

I'd love to see these tunnels on the old Google Maps.

And I've love to see the new Google Maps get flushed down one of these tunnels and forgotten about!

Large net existed in Chicago - the tunnel company

[pereric]

The mail tunnels have been mentioned. A somewhat similiar system was operating in Chicago for the first half of last century : The Chicago Tunnel company. It was a system like the UK mail tunnels with electrical narrow-gauge trains in tunnels. The cars were not driverless, but the network was larger, and open to any customer . Access was often with an elevator carrying a whole narrow-gauge car from the basement of buldings down to the tunnels. Pretty impressive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Who knows : with some standardisation and - especially - automatic loading / unloading and integration with existing delivery terminals, maybe it could work?

Existing infrastructure

[Anonymous Coward]

Robots could use existing infrastructure (sewer pipes) and even double-serve as cleaning devices. Although "toilet delivery" option seems a bit extreme...

Goodbye mailman, hello mole man?

[Anonymous Coward]

Back in 1956, Harvey Rupert Elder attempted the same thing in NYC. While digging underground tunnels, he discovered a realm called Subterranea. There he found hi-tech devices abandoned by the race of Deviants and used them conquer the race of Moloids. Next in 1961, he tried to use his advanced technology and army of Moloids to conquer the surface world, but a scientific genius named Reed Richards thwarted his plans. I think they just made a movie about it, scheduled for release on August 7, 2015 in North America.

they did this in NYC 100 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City

It does, actually

[Overzeetop]

Well, actually, they do: http://www.flyingmag.com/news/...

However when a plane falls out of the sky in a fiery ball of death, it doesn't destroy the rest of the airspace in the system so badly that all of the atmosphere has to be rebuilt before air travel can be started again.

What?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's just received funding from the British government to help test the viability of the proposal.

How? Outgoing governments don't have any power as they've been dissolved by the Queen.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

Presumably 'just' means sometime more than 19 days ago. Hardly forever.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

You have a different definition of just to most people then...

Tibetan tunnels?

[jandersen]

This is a great idea, and as we hear on BBC, there are already existing tunnels all over the world, dug by Tibetans:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programme...

Re:Tibetan tunnels?

[itsdapead]

This is a great idea, and as we hear on BBC, there are already existing tunnels all over the world, dug by Tibetans:

Unfortunately that won't work for London: Tibetans can't dig inside the M25 or their shovels spontaneously combust.

So, I guess this would be...

[ArcSecond]

So, this would be an example of Internet business evolving into the proverbial "series of tubes"?

This has been done before.

[Nerobro]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company

And they operated into the 1970's.

London is going to be a hard nut to crack, ti's already got several levels of tunnels under the city.

There are some real issues with underground tunnels, especially ones to small to be traversed by people. People are "universal power tools" and can get in there and fix unusual problems. If a rail car the size of a trash can gets stuck in a tunnel you can send a man down.. figuruing out how to get it out is going to be a real trial.

chicago package tunnels 1899-1952

[goombah99]

Just like chicago's under ground mail and package delivery system. Also used to cool buildings.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

this is what inspired the Royal Mail company to build theirs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...

Mexican Drug cartel tunnels

[goombah99]

http://www.gq.com/news-politic...

the latest twist is using mini tunnels created by a ditch witch to send small packages long distances across the border.
.

The UK and the Underground Mind

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the English fascination to go underground with *everything* a cultural bias?

New York Roosevelt Island Trash Collection

[mspohr]

New York's Roosevelt Island has had underground tubes collecting trash for 30 years. They use a Swedish system of 20" diameter tubes. It's worked well for 30 years and is still maintained. No reason this couldn't be done in reverse to deliver stuff.
http://www.wired.com/2010/08/t...

Re:New York Roosevelt Island Trash Collection

[DriveDog]

In different pipes, presumably!

Re:New York Roosevelt Island Trash Collection

[mspohr]

Well, it you got creative about it, it could be garbage out from 6am to noon and packages in from noon to 6 pm... would probably require some cleaning or containment of the packages.

Tunnel drones?

[theendlessnow]

Why not the "drone mole". Instead of flying, it tunnels. Like a Horta

Oh.. and can I have my city opt out?

GOFER

[xdor]

Geo Fast Endoscopic Rail (GOFER)

There's no question now: if there's an acronym the Brits have to build it.

Pipe post

[MoarSauce123]

Such systems were in common use up until the 60s in major cities. They used pressured air for propelling containers through a system of pipes. That was mainly used for inner city express mail service, so the pipes way not have a diameter large enough for parcels, but I bet if you turn on the compressors in Vienna or Berlin most of the system will still work fine. This makes the news? This gets government funding? Maybe ten years from now I propose a system using magnetic tape to record audio and video as well as computer programs. I am sure I can get gov't funding for that as well, huh?

Underground tunnels are so much better than

[eric_harris_76]

Underground tunnels are so much better that above-ground tunnels.

Share pipes

[DriveDog]

Just make fresh water pipes bigger and put the goods to be delivered inside sealed spheres and send them down the water pipes. A lock could be installed in every neighborhood for removal. This is obviously a one-way system.