

Foodtube - transporting food like oil, water, and gas. - twidlit
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/12/want-fries-with-those-packets-introducing-foodtubes.ars

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radu_floricica
Remember the "last mile" problem in the internet years? Now try scaling it
from wire to container.

This is the typical example of something which seems to make a lot of sense,
but well, doesn't. Exactly at which level would this be better then the
current system?

Long distances - why is it better then rail? It's a lot more expensive, but
the upsides are few and far between.

Medium distances - the equivalent of public transport for merchandise. You'd
have to set up "distribution stations" for this to work, and you'll run all
too often in a situation where you drive the merchandise to a station 1-2 km
away, transport it by tube to the next station, maybe 15 km away, and then
drive it again to the final destination. It's simpler and cheaper to just
drive the damn thing all the way.

As for a "last mile" type of solution... I doubt there's any city which really
wants to invest in this.

~~~
Ripster
Some engineers spent years of their careers studying this problem. How long
did it take you to reach the conclusion that it is not viable?

~~~
ceejayoz
People have spent years studying all sorts of things that are impractical to
implement in the real world.

~~~
Retric
There have been small scale versions of this used in major cities in the past.
The primary limitation has been package routing, but that should be a
reasonably simple problem now days. Realistically outside major city’s or
industrial areas, building tunnels is unlikely to be cost effective. However,
in a major metropolitan area it may be cost effective depending on what rates
you can charge.

PS: Same day currier companies already use the subway system; they have a
"mole" that stays in the subway and hands packages to curriers at each
station.

~~~
chopsueyar
The tunnels were then used to flood the basements of unsuspecting businesses.

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

~~~
sorbus
Your wording is somewhat misleading, as the flooding was entirely accidental
in all of the incidents mentioned.

~~~
chopsueyar
I apologize for making you read the wikipedia article.

;)

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speleding
Sounds great, but why limit ourselves to food? If we are going through the
trouble of building a pipeline all around the country we might as well use it
for any type of cargo that will fit a 2m by 1m container.

~~~
jacques_chester
My first instinct is "what about furniture"? And later, "hey, let's use the
dimensions of shipping containers!"

The problem is volume of dirt to be removed. Assuming circular tunnels, the
volume approximates (pi _(r^2))_ length. It's an O(n2) problem to increase the
size of cargo.

Hence the focus on food, I suppose. For small cargos in densely settled areas
this might be viable. For long haul I think that rail and road will still be
king and queen.

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shalmanese
This is retarded. In the same way that the "vertical farming", lets grow all
our crops in skyscrapers idea that was spreading around a few months ago was
retarded (<http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/08/16/towering-lunacy/>).

Simple logic from first principles can prove this. How much does food cost per
pound? Somewhere around $5 a pound seems like a roughly good estimate. How
much of this is transportation costs? Somewhere around 10% is a figure that is
commonly cited. Even ignoring the fact that most of this transportation cost
is "last mile", which the tubes can't solve, you're still envisioning a plan
in which tubes can transport goods at 50 cents a pound and still break even.

If we were able to transport goods for 50 cents a pound then, guess what,
we've obsoleted a whole lot more industries than just food. People, for one,
are a lot more valuable, even mail is more valuable. There's a reason why we
don't have subways running through every one of our cities and that's because
digging tunnels is freakishly more expensive than what this plan is
envisioning.

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RiderOfGiraffes
This has the potential to do for inland transportation what containers did for
long-distance haulage. The problem is the infrastructure. There's a lot to do
before the system works at all.

To bootstrap, some "community" needs to decide they want it, and then they
need to build a small but extensible version. Extensions need to be able to
"interface" with the existing system without necessarily being limited by it.

I can see this working as, say, the main means of transporting physical
materials around a new Olympics venue, or a new commercial district.

It's basically an automated high-speed rail system, but underground.

~~~
jerf
'Extensions need to be able to "interface" with the existing system without
necessarily being limited by it.'

This is the blocker. The way I see this happening is a robotic inner-city
courier that can live with humans on a sidewalk. The feasibility of this is no
longer pie-in-the-sky, now it's merely "on the horizon". Once you have this,
it becomes actually economical in another couple of years. Once it becomes
economical, there are too many of them on the sidewalk and you start
considering things like giving them their own lanes, or their own paths
through buildings, or, eventually, their own access to underground tunnels.
From there somebody works out that they can make money building a tunnel from
Manhattan to the rest of the city, and the network starts forming.

The advantage of this approach is that once you have such robots you can start
using current systems. Put a dedicated car on an otherwise normal freight
train for these things, for instance. Eventually you've built a hybrid system
that can accommodate all sorts of approaches.

It ends up looking like the Internet and will probably recapitulate its
development. There's no point stringing a tube across the country from one
endpoint to another unless you've got a network already working on both ends.
Attempts to bootstrap will generally fail because they will be too focused on
top-down deployments of massive tubes that won't be useful for years; the
winners will be the people who successfully bootstrap from the bottom and
build the network from the bottom up. The tech isn't quite there yet, though,
but getting close.

So, I'd actually say it isn't even that "extensions" need to interface with
the system, it is the system that will eventually be interfacing with the
"extensions". The flexible robots have to come first, _then_ we will build the
tube network. Until those robots exist the tube network economics just make no
sense, not even in a dense city.

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grantbachman
Screw it, just create a whole new general transportation system. Outfit some
capsules with oxygen systems and transport people (who are shorter that 6 1/2
feet). It'd be a hell of a ride.

~~~
protomyth
I've actually been waiting for some group to setup a city somewhere with a new
basic infrastructure than the road-liquid fuel model. It almost seems like
someone could setup a community based on underground / enclosed personal and
robot electrical wheeled transport for local movement with rail to get the
distance movement. Not cheap, but if it starts small and has very good
internet, it might attract some people to give a modest size project a go.

~~~
alexfarran
Here you go: Masdar City
[http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9004209...](http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90042092)

~~~
protomyth
I saw that a while back, but I was looking for something with a more western
basis to see if the current attitudes could allow something like this to work.

------
protomyth
I assume, give there description, that we are only talking terminal
transportation at the city level (as the pipeline to get crops to mills is
mostly field -> truck -> elevator -> 125 car train / barge).

I can't help but think replacing the current local delivery vehicles with
electric would be cheaper and require less infrastructure changes. It would
actually work better for electric vehicles since the routes are known and
charge times can be scheduled.

If your going to build something like this, then just make it tall enough for
autonomous cargo carrying robots so you can transport people, food, and
packages year round.

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flogic
It's a cute idea. Though I think the limiting part is the tube itself.
Installing underground tubes is going to be expensive. Maybe it would make
more sense to forgo the tube and just use electric vehicles. You could install
overhead power lines in some of the busier corridors. Delivery vehicles could
trolley along until the last half or quarter mile. Then, they'd have to switch
to batteries.

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protomyth
Their presentation video in the article is probably one of the worst examples
of how to show off your new idea. It is confusing and has some phrases that
might seriously lead your discussion off track (e.g. "FTUBES are more eco-
friendly and economic than road building"). Never mind the early geocities-
web-style-put-to-video feel.

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Ripster
This idea has been around since the 50's under various forms and will someday
change the world as we know it. It is mostly known as Personal Rapid transit
(PRT) and can be used to trasport food, waste, and all sorts of cargo
including people at 1/2 of the cost of any other transport system (bikes can
be cheaper). See www.personalrapidtransport.com (not a commercial site, just
advocacy).

~~~
pyrhho
Link is broken for me. Relevant wikipedia page for those interested:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_rapid_transit>

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GiraffeNecktie
I wonder what they meant to say when they wrote this sentence "Huge quantities
of diesel are burned to move food trucks—17 billion for each 25 million UK
homes, which represents eight percent of all the carbon dioxide mixed into the
atmosphere."

17 billion trucks for each 25 million UK homes? Wow!

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>17 billion for each 25 million UK homes

Presumably "17 billion [litres of diesel each year to serve] [strike: for
each] 25 million UK homes"?

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Semiapies
I can see some potential value in applying networking principles to cargo
transport (or at least, more so than they have been ).

However, transportation is a tiny portion of the cost and ecological impact of
agriculture. Massive efforts to try to address merely that small fraction of
costs/harm are misguided.

Not that I can't see the appeal to businesses - instead of having to pay gas
taxes, etc., you get taxpayers to foot your goods transport for you. (You
"own" a section of the pipe, but big deal.) Furthermore, being an established
player who gets food piped straight to you gives you a huge advantage over any
upstart entrant into the market, since they won't get piped to without
additional spending that the public will be disinterested in supporting and
that your lobbyists can torpedo.

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mhb
Maybe there are some lessons in the Denver International Airport baggage
system:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/world/americas/26iht-
denve...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/world/americas/26iht-
denver.html?_r=1)

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spectre
I'm dubious of how such a system would stand up during an earthquake. As a
member of Civil Defence in a city that was recently struck by a 7.1 magnitude
earthquake (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Canterbury_earthquake>) it was
remarkable how with just a bulldozer any damaged transport routes could be
returned to mostly usable condition. I shudder to think what would happen if
we had been reliant on something like these foodtubes, image how long a minor
displacement would take to fix.

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ippisl
I have seen much more competitive solutions for large parts of this
problem(from the green perspective). for example assemblon's hydrogen storage
solution(hydronol). assemblon claims that for $100 million they could build a
truck fueling network that would span the u.s. . compare this for foodtubes
~7Billion for the greater london(altought including last mile).

Also , this kind of project requires public investment. since it would be
fully automated ,it would probably take a lot of driving jobs.This would be a
hard sell for a public entity in a democratic country.

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hexley
Will it be maintainable? What happens when there's a collision and we have a
pile of milk and rotting eggs stuck in the most inconvenient place possible?

~~~
protomyth
I would expect that it will not be pleasant and the chain reaction will make
the news. It should be noted that this did happen in the not too distant past
with the rail system in the US. I know of at least one car filled with
soybeans that sat on some side track in the middle of nowhere for multiple
(6+) months.

Story: At one point, I worked at a company that did clinical trials. They had
this great computer controlled track with multiple cars that delivered all the
samples to each lab (1 self powered car per sample). It could go straight up /
flip over and the sample never tipped.

One day, a sample didn't arrive at one of the labs. It was frozen and we
needed to get to it before it thawed as it, shall we say, wasn't a liquid. We
traced the track an finally found it Alien's style when I turned a slow 180
with the flashlight as I was about half in the ceiling standing on a ladder.
It had stopped because a rather large rat had not avoided getting hit by the
car. I did not, at any point, think this was a logical consequence of my
choice of professions.

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_debug_
Idea : We have undersea fiber optic cables. Why not have undersea foodtubes to
deliver food to poorer nations? Developed countries waste bucketloads of food
every day.

I'm sure people smarter than me will figure out how to install repeaters to
keep the food capsules moving and prevent a cheeseburger-traffic-jam 1000
miles below sea level. :-)

~~~
nodata
Because poor countries aren't hungry due to lack of food, they're hungry for
political and economic reasons.

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M1573RMU74710N
Yea, but what happens when the kids break into the tubes and get into the
softening jelly* ?

*<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZeIBd2b_rU>

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johngalt
First ask yourself why the old tubes built in the 1800s were abandoned.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube>

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chopsueyar
Different type of piracy?

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iwr
In other words, a Soylent (Green) transportation network.

