Cargo sous terrain – Underground cargo train in Switzerland
cst.ch
cst.ch
The lack of humans means that they can build tunnels with fewer escape routes and almost without regard to ventilation, the centrally coordinated 30km/h speed ought to be cheaper than building for the kinds of speeds one must expect from individual drivers.
>they're trying to build small-diameter tunnels like the Boring Company, but using the strengths of the format much more cleverly.
Agreed. It's scarcely possible to use tunnels less cleverly than by putting large, single-occupant vehicles through them.
Not to mention letting the humans escape alive in case a vehicle crashes and burns.
You will always have humans in the tunnel. How do you plan to perform inspections, maintenance, and even emergency support when a cart breaks down and blocks your tunnel?
Certain emergencies would also be much easier to handle without people, like nitrogen purging a fire. Realistically I don't think you'd want to shut down the whole tunnel and wait for hours when you need to fix a problem, but it might work if there aren't many problems. It might work for routine maintenance if it's utilized like most packing facilities- deliveries go out in waves, with packing etc in between.
With pigs of course. Not the ones that go oink though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigging
"Must be safe for humans" always shifts the costs an order of magnitude.
Most of the heat in that situation comes from braking.
If they pre-chill and coast through the tunnel they'd extract heat.
Overall it seems like a non problem with many solutions if any are actually needed.
They did that because Tesla are available for them quickly.
Do you really think those peope are to stupid to understand that higher occupency can increase threwput?
This is ancient technology, literally over a century old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway
No need to name-drop the Boring Company, as it's just a marketing company who bought a COTS tunneler.
Nothing that this company presented was novel. The critical aspect of putting together an railway network through tunnels is a) it's collosal construction and maintenance costs, b) property rights.
The numbers of putting together a tunnel network hardly add up, and ultimately projects fail because there is no way to make the numbers work unless you expect to fleece local and central governments.
It's also quite strange that CST's marketing brochure does not mention at all two of the main solutions to p2p logistics in urban environment: hub and spoke model with the last mile delivered with small electric cars/scooters/bicycles (Amazon already employs this heavily), and drones.
Just as with other Musk companies, the first version isn't that amazing and people fall over themselves laughting declaring how it will never work and never be practical and how they will never manage to produce them in real numbers.
So its basically like Falcon 1 and Tesla Roaster/Model S.
The leader of Boring is an engineer who was doing well at Tesla.
I think in 5-10 years it will be a very significant comapny.
No, stating that the Boring Company is a marketing company that bought a COTS is an accurate statement. The Boring Company didn't invented tunellers digging holes in the ground, and just because it claimed it did modifications to a COTS tuneller (and uncorroborated ones) that changes nothing.
I understand that the Musk Stan phenomenon is a thing, but let's not try to make it look that he invented fire and the wheel.
> that changes nothing
And you know this how?
> that he invented fire and the wheel.
I literally said they bought a machine and they are working iteration by iteration to improve it.
Who are you arguing against?
It's not clear to me what you are saying here. Is it that Musk is clarivoyant, and always selects for lines of business where exponential progress is certain to be made incrementally, or is it that his involvement guarantees that incremental progress will always be made?
As a follow-up to the former: do you think that's the case for Twitter?
As a follow-up to the latter: for how many companies do you believe Musk can simultaneously ensure success?
My read of GP's comment is that even without any concrete evidence to support a prediction of success (and indeed possibly the opposite), for some reason Musk's involvement alone is enough to be confident that the Boring Company will be relevant in 5-10 years. It's hard for me to understand his logic without writing it off as personality cult stuff.
> that was sort of the basis of the the Toyota Production System / "Lean" revolution in manufacturing that Tesla itself adapted.
Yes but Toyota then stuck around for to long on one technology.
> Musk's involvement alone is enough to be confident that the Boring Company will be relevant in 5-10 years. It's hard for me to understand his logic without writing it off as personality cult stuff.
That seems like a strange opinion. If somebody us successful in other conservative high capital business then its a personality cult to suggest that this might be possible again.
And the reason are partly the same. Electrification. So its not even a totally different unique field.
And its not just Musk. I just generally think its a good idea to remove complexity from the tunnel and put it into the pod. One of the big problems with subways is limited numbers and terrible maintenance. You can piggyback of the EV industry.
> As a follow-up to the former: do you think that's the case for Twitter?
I have no idea. Its such a different thing. I don't think its a great use of his time.
> As a follow-up to the latter: for how many companies do you believe Musk can simultaneously ensure success?
I don't think he can ensure it, but it makes it much likely.
But I would say the number is not static. It depends on the problems that exist within the companies. In 2017 during Model 3 ramp it was likely 1 of them, but lucky at that point SpaceX had nailed the most fundamental things in terms of reuse and the company faced on lethal issues.
He he access to lots of great people that he at least partly trust to put into these positions. So that helps, and he pretty good at recruiting young talent.
So I don't really know.
Those would be high-capital low output in general, as low capital or high output have probably already tried many things.
If there’s a Muskette strength it would be identifying those.
You mean a marketing company that built their own tunneler, surely. The one they originally bought isn't being used anymore, as far as I know.
Or the simple practicalities of the later. I'm a member of the public. What I know of the boring project comes from the youtube videos of the traffic jams in the current Vegas tesla tunnel project. Building an underground tunnel to bypass above-ground traffic problems worked only on the Simpsons (Stonecutter episode). In the real world such tunnels are just another 1-lane road subject to all the same problems as they would on the surface, plus a bunch of bonus problems. It isn't interesting because it isn't practical.
See also, the Chicago Tunnel Company: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company
According to Wiki, Chicago's started running in 1906, and London's in 1927.
Paper processors get released all the time.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/rome-s-tremendous...
Safety evacuation requirements are also easier to meet when you limit tunnel access to a trained workforce under a permit system, compared to a situation where you have the general public in the tunnels. Emergency rebreathers, for example, can become part of your plan. A higher level of safety can be assured for workers since a permit system means that a control center will have positive accountability of everyone in harm's way.
Obviously you still want to extract them as quickly as possible but it’s easier to manage.
[0] One relatively common danger to bulk cargo ships is rusting of transported cargo consuming the oxygen in a enclosed space then crews becoming incapacitated when they enter for maintenance or other activities.
I envy them greatly. The US should be building 5-10 copies of this same system in various regions, connected by a functioning freight rail system for long haul. Our diffuse development pattern and the enormous accompanying expense will be our downfall.
If should be noted that the Gottard Tunnel project was subjected to a national referendum after making it clear the project was astronomically expensive, it would take ages to build, and it was virtually impossible to recoup the investment.
Meanwhile the city of Zürich dug a 4.8 km train tunnel and lost (permanently stuck and removal impossible because of possible collapse) a TBM during work almost collapsing the Bahnhofplatzt for just around 2 Billion.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinberg_Tunnel
[2] https://www.zvv.ch/zvv/de/ueber-uns/projekte/in-betrieb/durc...
For example, who knows or cares about the Alameda corridor? https://www.acta.org even though it transfers tons of freight every single day.
fwiw, the Italy and Austra (with EU contribution) are building a similar in the same mountain range a few km eastwards
Also, it presumably required EU funds to push the project through. My read of GBT and this new CST system is that both are private ventures. That is to say, I take the Swiss projects to be at the tail end of careful analysis, whereas the others may be the result of political desire absent a compelling business case, sort of like trying to make rail transit work in Southern California.
The Gotthard Base Tunnel was built for the national Swiss railway company, which is fully state-owned. CST seems to be private, although among the largest investors are three state-owned companies (La Poste, Swisscom and the Swiss railway company).
These kind of projects today are always largely funded with public funds in Europe (including outside the EU). It is simply not realistic or desirable to leave them to private entities.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_d%27Ambin_Base_Tunnel
Passenger rail is another matter entirely. Common wisdom about trains in America seems to focus on passenger rail (which is infamously abysmal in America.) But that absolutely does not generalize to freight rail.
US moves a lot of bulk freight by rail that isn’t particularly high value. I remember reading that freight railroads are sometimes opposed to decarbonization plans because a good deal of their volume is coal and oil.
One thing that is potentially a problem is that freight rail has been so optimized and cost cut to the bare bones that the network is now extremely brittle. This tends to impact passenger rail more than freight rail (passenger rail is legally supposed to have priority, but in practice this has never been enforced and the freight carriers usually just make passenger rail take the hit instead of freight), but this is a problem in major hubs like Chicago.
And I bring up coal and oil, to say that if major changes were to happen in those markets and they dried up, the American freight rail network is not set up to easily pivot to things like fast freight that might take its place, and then we would have a freight rail network that is great for addressing a nonexistent market. Fast freight needs generally straighter, faster lines than what exists today.
Manual access is a concern, but from what I can tell the vehicles are powered by induction instead of batteries. The cargo might be the bigger fire risk.
They really aren't. It's already known that there's a distance and throughpot threshold where roadway and railway make more sense. The main blocker on the ralway side is that infrastructure costs are quite high, and roadway's flexibility always involves trucks handling the last mile.
> Taken off so far
Other than the Beijing airport train there is no real other maglev running. Even the Virgin Hyperloop has achieved more than this project. And let's not get into what happened to them recently...
The website is very clear that the intent is for these tunnels to be dug underneath cities, to relieve traffic burden from road distribution.
Also they PLAN to start operation in 2031, which is so far it might as well never happen.
This project is under evaluation in some Cantons (St. Gallen and Thurgau) for viability and may never be completed.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Usually these systems are more costly and have lower throughput than trains because: 1. Trains use existing, mature technology and there are plenty existing manufacturers 2. Because trains are coupled together into trains, throughput is higher because there is not a need to space self-driving carriages apart 3. Because trains are coupled together, the expensive bits go in the locomotives and the carriage construction is simpler and cheaper
That's why this proposal has tiny cars and even tinier overhead vehicles. It's not so much a train-but-worse, but a truck-but-on-tracks.
Of course we could just put autonomous small vehicles on existing train tracks, but that won't happen in the next two decades because they are incompatible with the existing users of those rails.
https://www.bnsf.com/ship-with-bnsf/ways-of-shipping/equipme...
This allows a quicker switch to last-mile whilst still moving much of the distance on rail.
The CST system seems to operate at almost zero distance between carriages, which even with the lower speed of 30 km/h should still have a greater total bandwidth than an equivalent-sized two track railway system. Also, it can operate 24/7 unlike rail systems (because of noise complaints and co-existence with passenger trains), which should further increase the available bandwidth.
If you find yourself living next to tracks, the best you can do is try to drown out the noise like this person did [0]
The only really odd thing I noticed was there was a wall that would squeak as the freight train approached. I suspect this had to do something with the houses construction however.
The main cost is the double-sided crossing guards necessary, and/or closure of some crossings deemed no longer necessary.
https://railroads.dot.gov/highway-rail-crossing-and-trespass...
As the railways here belong to the nation states instead of the private freight companies, freight trains are at the bottom of the barrel in priority... and given that it takes a lot of energy to accelerate a fully laden freight train, most operators tend to run freight trains exclusively at night where the amount of stops is minimal.
There are certainly advantages to single-unit cars that avoid the need for shunting, but the maintenance cost on these will be tremendously higher on a per-unit basis. Hard to say that it's a clear win.
So factories had a single motor, a giant steam engine that fed a complicated web of pulleys and crankshafts.
Electric motors killed those old single motor factories.
The same logic results in a single locomotive pulling a giant train. You need a human per locomotive, keeping the messy diesel in one place helps a lot, diesel engines need a lot of maintenance, etc.
In 2021, electric motors and batteries are cheap and tiny. Trains on a dedicated track don't need humans. Automated swarms of small motors are the future.
Rail where each car is powered is usually called light rail when used for passengers, but I guess there wouldn't be much stopping light rail being used for freight.
The key now isn't the motors but the remote controlling.
The last mile transport to stores will be by van or bike. And that's a metaphorical last mile; the density of the hubs appears to be pretty low, with e.g. 2-3 hubs in Zürich.
The thing they claim makes this work is bundling all deliveries going to the same receiver (across all suppliers) into the same carriage on the sending end, which then makes it easy to optimize that last mile delivery with small vehicles.
This doesn't seem very compelling.
Really this is more about not messing with the existing mix of safety and liability defenses used to keep the current situation on the current tracks. These systems have to be sufficiently different because we aren't going to do a flag day to full automation.
Now, doing that under a city might make sense. Chicago had a system like that.[1] There was dense coverage under downtown Chicago, with most streets tunneled and connections to many buildings. But this was before trucks. It was a solution to the "last mile" problem, getting goods from the railroad stations to business buildings.
The costs of unpacking big trucks or freight cars to put things in small containers would dominate the transportation cost. Manhattan has that problem. There's a whole industry that unloads tractor-trailers in New Jersey and repacks the contents onto smaller trucks for delivery.
I was under the impression that containerisation and palletization of cargo leads to huge efficiencies, but surely this setup would require much more labour-intensive (or machine-intensive) loading and unloading than just slapping a shipping container on a rail-car?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r11X-zMF_pc
(Non-English, use subtitle)
Surely trains are very efficient and commercial-only on-rail transports for non perishable/non urgent goods can ALSO run on renewable when there is enough energy also stabilizing the grid and leaving perhaps a side channel for perishable/urgent goods, a thing no other practical means can do BUT they are still not flexible. We design a network hoping that in a decade and for more decades it will be useful to pay it back.
That's why I'm for air and water transports: a plane/chopper/drone a ship/sub/* can go anywhere on air/water, we all needs infra on departure and arrivals places. They cost more in operational terms, but they are flexible and cost far less in infra terms. Development of "flying cars/taxis" and "new cheap ships" seems to prove that such line of thoughts have various advocates. Surely that scale only in a distributed and not that densely populated world, are we heading to a mass genocide perhaps?
The ever-increasing freight and leisure traffic, however, has been causing long traffic jams at busy times even without border enforcements. The Brenner Pass is the only major mountain pass within the area; other nearby alternatives are footpaths across higher mountains at an altitude of above 2,000 metres (6,600 feet). As a result, air and noise pollution have generated heavy debate in regional and European politics. As of 2004, about 1.8 million trucks crossed the Europa Bridge per year.
90% of the time you can use ordinary roads, with autonomous driving acting like a normal truck, giving the meat bags plenty of space. The most congested 10% you can build restricted access paths only for your smart trucks where they can act more like a train, with minimal spacing, increasing the traffic capacity of the road/tunnel/bridge/whatever so the extra cost of constructing it pays off sooner and/or it's cheaper in the first place because it's not built for drivers so doesn't need to be as safe.
The eCascadia has a 230 mile range on a 475 kWh battery. If you make that 1.5 MWh, it'll handle essentially any trip a single driver can make before his workday is over. A 1.5 MWh battery works out to ~17,500 lbs. Subtract the engine, exhaust, and fuel weight from those trucks and the majority of tractor trailers on the road will still be under the legal weight limit.
The largest factor is the lack of charging (detouring to hit a charger is very costly) and the cost of batteries that size.
Run it at night, at economically efficient speeds, in convoys, on motorways and you get 80% benefits with 20% of the effort. No cyclists, roundabouts, driveways, parking, children, back roads, routing you've got less other traffic, could modify the road itself, run more smaller trucks, EV versus diesel, no tired human living away from home to worry about. Use Bus Rapid Transit corridors at off-peak times.
Feels like something thats going to go from stupid to standard very quickly once some tipping point gets hit (probably based on battery availability).
Might never happen.