
Wanted: Cofounder for YC S19. Robotic Tunnel Delivery of Groceries/food/packages - tuberelay
I want to use modern tunneling tech like horizontal directional drilling and pipe-jacking to build networks of tunnels under major cities to allow high speed &quot;just in time&quot; deliveries using small autonomous vehicles.<p>Looking for someone with ability to move to SF in summer 2019 for YC (or another program).<p>I am: 36, ex medical doctor, have a decent amount of seed capital.  Interested in small lithium vehicles, construction and the environment.<p>You:  Happy to move to SF for YC (and probably even if YC app doesn&#x27;t work out). Hardworking and ambitious and upbeat :).  Any robotics or construction or civil engineering experience would be useful, but not essential.  PR&#x2F;public speaking&#x2F;sales&#x2F;communication abilities would be great too. Qualities matching those of the YC application would also be useful eg. cool projects you&#x27;ve worked on in the past.<p>contact@tuberelay.com
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toomuchtodo
Hint: Sell this to communities as utility tunneling to have them cover the
cost (fiber, power, water, sewer, etc) and use the remaining space for
autonomous mobility as part of your contract with them.

[https://www.boringcompany.com/products/](https://www.boringcompany.com/products/)
(Conduit Tunnel)

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SamReidHughes
If you can pull this off please wire everybody up for fiber while you're at
it.

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heyjudy
There's plenty of dark fiber in numerous metros thanks to the dotcom times,
the main issue is last mile premise deployment and the cost of labor involved.
You can't miracle away those costs to miraculously hook everyone up without
spending billions sans a profit model.

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SamReidHughes
With efficient tunneling you can have efficient wiring. The last mile problem
becomes a last chain problem.

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reaperducer
It would be interesting if you could revive this delivery method.

Chicago still has its old delivery tunnel network beneath downtown. It’s not
in great shape. The Palmer House Hilton uses its section to grow mushrooms for
its restaurant.

My father used to talk about delivery networks beneath Manhattan that he used.
But I think those may have been pneumatic.

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macp
^^^ This. Or, build into the subway lines. Avoids drilling costs for early
stages.

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parallel_item
Maybe while they are at it they can make some additional $$ improving NYC MTAs
sensor network so MTA can know where the trains are!

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reaperducer
There's no reason they can't. Public/private partnerships are done all the
time.

In Chicago, AT&T got a deal to put small cell towers in places they wouldn't
ordinarily be allowed in exchange for building the Office of Emergency
Management and Communications a private wireless data network.

In the subways, there was some kind of deal struck with the wireless
companies, as well. I don't remember exactly how it worked but it was
something like Brand X gets 2-year exclusive on wireless service in the
subways if it builds the infrastructure that everyone else can piggyback on
later.

It was slightly comical years later when a dozen cities around the world were
touting how awesome it was that they were "first" to have wireless service in
their subways, while people in Chicago had already been living with the
scourge of loud people Facetiming other nobodies about absolutely nothing for
everyone to hear. The screeching of the L wheels is preferable.

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blasdel
[https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_...](https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm)

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heyjudy
Not to be a Debbie Downer, but to think critically and not fall in love with
an idea more than reality. TBH, sounds capex intensive and there must be
reason(s) why it was abandoned, i.e., cost to hookup areas and inflexibility
of rigid, expensive infrastructure deployed such that it's not scalable for
the profit that it could generate... if Manhattan, HK and Tokyo don't use it
anymore, why now?

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tuberelay
why now:

\- tunnelling tech has come a long way - pipejacking means you can install
hundreds of metres of pipes from a single hole without digging a trench.
Horizontal direct drilling means the chinese can put a 600mm diameter pipe
spanning 3kms under the yangtze river from a single access point.

\- lithium batteries and vehicle routing tech means that small delivery
vehicles can do their jobs at incredible speed and efficiency.

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gitgud
Sure it's possible, but how expensive are those underground pipes? To payback
the cost of installing those would take a huge amount of food deliveries
right? Doesn't sound profitable at first glance anyway

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marcell
I've been thinking about this idea over the past few months. My main thought
is whether it passes muster in terms of economics. Revenue can be estimated as
a multiple, say, FedEx or UPS revenue. Maybe it would be 2-5x of whatever
those do now, to account for the increased convenience. Do you have any rough
ideas on what the cost would be?

Also, another big issue is permitting. Which govt bodies would have to issue a
permit to allow underground tunnels? Eg. I if I want to build some tunnels
under Palo Alto, who has to approve it?

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dgarud
Couple of comments:

1) What is the size of the pipes you are considering? Will it be big enough
for humans to get into for maintenance - I was thinking what would happen if a
delivery vehicle breaks down or a small animal gets into a tunnel.

2) Have you considered small blimps as delivery vehicles? The technology has
got considerably better and should be less noisy than drones.

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tuberelay
1) 700mm diameter - broken down vehicles should be shuntable, but a person
could get in there reasonably easily.

2) helium blimps lift 1 gram per litre of helium, so to lift 10kg of groceries
they would need a 10 cubic meter blimp or a 2.7 meter diameter sphere - seems
big and difficult to control especially in winds.

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S4M
A person could get in a pipe of 700mm diameter? I seriously doubt it.

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lgregg
It's a tight fit but works. I would have to put one arm forward and one arm
back to shift my shoulders for a torpedo tube (approx 21in or 533mm depending
on nation). 700mm is another 6 inches. The average male's shoulder width is
about 18 and go wide as 24 inches (often hard core weight lifters).

[https://www.google.com/search?q=person+in+a+torpedo+tube&tbm...](https://www.google.com/search?q=person+in+a+torpedo+tube&tbm=isch)

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macp
What's the advantage of tunnels as compared to self-driving ground vehicles or
air drones?

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tuberelay
Air drones - loud, need to be pretty big and noisy to lift larger payloads eg.
groceries. In order to cover use cases of food/grocery/package delivery across
a city and surrounding suburbs there would be a constant stream of high
powered drones whirring through major areas and around streets/footpaths. I
don't think this would be acceptable to the public at scale.

Self-driving footpath size delivery vehicles - people won't tolerate anything
going faster than 10km/hr on sidewalks and that + crossing roads makes it too
slow. In addition, at any reasonable volume and covering longer distances eg.
5km trips across a city these would end up blocking footpaths eg. if grocery
delivery sized drones were working in any sort of numbers.

Self-driving delivery cars - could work, but to replace all current
package/grocery/food deliveries would involve a huge fleet of cars, or
carrying multiple deliveries per car which makes them laggy - not good for
takeaway food or packages where a person needs to go to a sidewalk to meet the
delivery vehicle.

The idea is that delivery drones in tubes can travel at high speeds - faster
than cars (50+km/h with few/no stops), can be centrally controlled to
cooperate well on limited bandwidth routes, and will end up being able to be
routed like internet traffic. being able to arrive "just in time" will make
them ideal for sidewalk pickup by the end customer.

Although highly capital intensive, I think that a well-planned network like
this would allow efficiency and competition the likes of which have never been
seen before in delivery of groceries, packages and takeaways. Imagine the
ability for ANYONE in the city surrounds to compete on grocery prices, not
just the large supermarkets on high value real estate. "Last mile" delivery
costs are more than half of total courier costs - imagine if these were
reduced to near zero.

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tuberelay
A bit more about the economics of this:

Assuming each person in a city has:

\- a postal/courier package delivered every 2 days

\- a grocery delivery every 3 days

\- a takeaway/food delivery every 4 days

This means on average overall each person gets 1 delivery per day. Assuming
delivery cost of $2 per delivery, this means in a city of 1 million people
there is $2 million daily revenue for operators of this, or $700 million per
year. At a cost of capital of 5%, this would allow up to $14 billion dollars
to construct this network in a city of 1 million people. At an average $4
delivery cost there would be up to $28 billion available.

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maxander
What percentage of the city would have easy access to tunnel endpoints? It's a
pretty difficult last-mile problem.

At least in the short term, a good bet would be funneling stock to retail
stores. In lots of neighborhoods, big trucks parked on narrow streets to
offload cargo is a big problem.

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Adamantcheese
So why not use pneumatic tube transport instead? Too small? Also a failure of
a vehicle can block a tunnel entirely, maybe electrified rail would be better.
I'll keep an eye on your project, seems neat.

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tuberelay
Pneumatic tube means a single transport vessel going in 1 direction per
"airlocked" region of tube, as well as needing to be airtight. Having self-
powered electric vehicles means cheaper infrastructure and multiple vehicles
going in both directions at once.

Thanks :)

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schappim
I love this idea. How will you handle the network exit points?

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zahir777
Please share this comment on
[https://www.cofoundme.org](https://www.cofoundme.org)

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gammateam
> Happy to move to SF for YC

(or already lives in SF / Bay Area, I thought it was weird that you wrote this
twice, I wonder if there is a preconception about people that already live in
SF undertoning this, like already busy or already moved for some other 'change
the world' trope)

