The New Physical Internet To Ferry Freight Through Tubes, page 1

Well this is pretty interesting, researchers in the UK are considering building 3 foot tubes from food suppliers directly to neighborhoods. The 6 ft long bins can travel to 60mph using linear propulsion and automated routing systems.

The group wants to start in the London suburb of Croydon with a $625 million pilot network connecting all the borough’s food shops, schools and buildings. Such a network would remove diesel trucks from the road, cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 8 percent a year and reducing congestion, the project’s leaders say.

Of course with innovation comes costs and in this case it will cut into the trucking and distribution industries but maybe some new jobs will be created also. I hope it will save the consumers money.
Apparently this has moved beyond speculation and already being considered.

Two oil firms are apparently interested, EWeek Europe reports — the very companies that could stand to lose if diesel trucks are removed from the road. Foodtubes is talking to two firms about providing a pipeline in Canada’s permafrost and in the Middle Eastern desert, Hodson said.

www.popsci.com...

Pipeline-capsule, underground, rapid, electric, freight transport. GOODS-IN and WASTE-OUT computer-guided, lightweight capsules, travelling through dozens of interlinking 150 km circuits serving farms, producers, processors, packagers, wholesalers, retailers and recycling units. A typical dense-urban 150 km circuit will connect approximately 400 terminals at senders’ & receivers’ premises. Freight transfer depots will transfer cargos to and from traditional lorries, vans, pallets, waste-trucks and trains. Regions served by FOODTUBES will benefit from substantial road, rail & air traffic decongestion, from faster and smaller deliveries and cleaner street-level air.

FOODTUBES-Circuits will be designed for Dense-Urban, Urban, Rural and Wilderness regions. Diverse specialist capsules will be designed to carry a wide range of cargos from farm produce to ready-for-sale supermarket goods. Pipe-Terminals will be installed at supermarkets, shopping malls and markets, colleges, schools, large offices & institutions and at waste recycling depots.

Across countries like the UK, FOODTUBES will annually save up to 8% of man-made CO2 and other global-warming agents and street-level air pollutants. In less industrialised nations, where transport is a larger percent of overall pollution, the calculations indicate more than 8% savings.

www.noelhodson.com...

Wasn't there a futuristic scifi flick where this technology was the standard?
It sounds pretty cool and I bet additional consumer goods will be considered too. The article says that capsule stations would rent out docks for consumers to pick up the goods, a sort of "tube station" I guess.
What do you guys think?

Peace,
spec

reply to post by speculativeoptimist

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Definitely a pilot program should be tried. I have worked in hospitals where a pneumatic tube system was in use for transporting medical records. And Dan Brown's recent novel details another use for a tube system! The old U.S. drive-up bank teller windows also used a pneumatic tube system to receive deposit information from customers and send back a transaction receipt.

reply to post by Uphill

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Which D. Brown novel and how was it applied? Just curious, and these systems would be too big for a vacuum type delivery, so they are proposing automated propulsion.
Thanks for the reply and yes, I agree, some trials are necessary first.

peace,
spec

reply to post by mr10k

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Hey mr10km ,yes I think as always with new ideas, there will be someone contemplating a away to exploit them for personal gain or harm to others. They will have to create a new team for security I guess, the foodtube police.
Thanks for the reply!

spec

reply to post by speculativeoptimist

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A pneumatic tube system for transporting boxes of paper records appears in one scene of the latest Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol.

reply to post by Uphill

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Interesting Uphill, I will check it out...
Thanks,
spec

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