Hacker News Reader

Comment by radu_floricica | Hacker News Reader

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.

View on HN

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?

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

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.

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

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

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

I apologize for making you read the wikipedia article.

;)

15 minutes? :) Joking, joking

I used to think this is a great idea too, and got all enthusiastic about it. Somehow I changed my mind, no idea why... maybe trying to think about it being cost effective? I'm not completely outside the problem either: a few years ago a co-founded a small courier company, so I did spend some time thinking about how to best move stuff in a big city.

Right now I'd say the right way to go about things is more computing power. A "swarm" of couriers can probably be efficient and cost effective enough. The real break will come when we can have cars that drive themselves, so you don't even have to pay a full time human to move packages around.

But digging holes? In the few instances where you can actually do it, they're great. It's just that I really doubt it's at all scalable.

More expensive than rails? There may be good arguments against this system, but this is not one of them. Unless you are talking about building a railroad in the desert the cost of pushing a pipe in the ground (which can even be done without opening up the street for a small diameter) is certainly much lower than acquiring right of way alone, not to mention building all the support infrastructure such as bridges, etc.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com