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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.
Pneumatic post anyone?
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.
You know someone is going to ship a battery.
In London, Royal Mail did this until recently with normal snail mail.
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.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
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.
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.
bickerdyke
Revisiting underground tube systems is a far better idea than letting anybody and his uncle fly drones over the publics head.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
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".
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.
I can see it now, my package being lost underground where no man dare set foot.
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.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
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.
Maybe that is where this inspiration comes from. Sadly, they did not get the joke. So they thought it is an idea to implement.
In Berlin, after the war, trams were used to haul freight.
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.
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?
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.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
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.
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.
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...
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...
So, this would be an example of Internet business evolving into the proverbial "series of tubes"?
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
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.
You would have to be crazy to be sane in this world. -Nero
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...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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!
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...
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Why not the "drone mole". Instead of flying, it tunnels. Like a Horta
Oh.. and can I have my city opt out?
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.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Geo Fast Endoscopic Rail (GOFER)
There's no question now: if there's an acronym the Brits have to build it.
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 that above-ground tunnels.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
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.