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Comment by lesuorac | Hacker News Reader

What freight trains? ("In 2017, only about 5% of all freight in Japan is carried by rail ... Trucks carry about 50% and ships about 44%." [1]; "It is used relatively little for freight transport, accounting for just 0.84% of goods movement." [2])

Also it's apparently something they do. "And it’s not totally untested. The country’s Torigatayama limestone mine uses a 14-mile (23 km) belt, and in Africa a 62-mile (100 km) system moves phosphate between mine and port, SCMP notes."

Personally I'd think it'd be easier to make a canal but I'm not a civil engineer.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Freight_Railway_Company#...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Japan

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The famous Japanese rail network is incompatible with the ISO 40/20ft container spec. Surprise surprise...

that's what I was wondering, too. How is it incompatible? Wrong gauges?

JR (on which freight trains do run) network is 3/4 gauge, but JR shinkansen and other operators use standard.

>but JR shinkansen and other operators use standard.

That's irrelevant. The shinkansen tracks cannot be used for cargo trains: they're exclusively for high-speed passenger trains.

You can't share tracks between slow cargo trains and high-speed passenger trains. Not only is the scheduling impossible, but the cargo trains would ruin the tracks. The shinkansen tracks require frequent and thorough maintenance to keep them at the level needed for reliable high-speed service.

If you want to see what happens when you try to share tracks between cargo and passengers, just take a look at Amtrak. It's a complete disaster.

It's combination of tunnel ceiling height, weight limit, and chassis mounting compatibility. I'm not completely sure there were protectionism of either directions are involved with JNR/JR 12/20/31ft system and ISO 20/40ft, both seem to have been conceived around the same time in mid 60s.

I think that just changes the question to "Why belts instead of some cargo trains" then. Scheduling would no doubt be an issue, but is probably tractable.

Tokyo and Osaka are both on the ocean (although, a bit roundabout path between them). You would think it would be easier to just do more cargo ships point to point.

Trucks would be low latency, low bandwidth.

Cargo ships would be high bandwidth, high latency.

For example, I think trucks would be better for perishable goods.

Since both are port cities, I very much wonder why they're not stopping them by boat?

Canals would also require drivers for the boats (modulo some AI powered boats or something).

I suspect the real answer here is that the report was just some exploratory thinking, and unlikely to really happen.

I wonder how the ratio of people:stuff breaks down WRT boats and trucks. I’d expect trucks to be much more person intensive, but the vagaries of crew sizes and canal widths could throw that off I guess.

I quickly scanned the Rhine Regulations for Navigation Personnel. The tables starting on page 49 show minimum crew requirements for types of ships and operating modes: https://www.ccr-zkr.org/files/documents/reglementSTF/RPN_010...

It seems to go from a single boatmaster to crews of less than 10. The smallest container ships for inland shipping are about 30-ish containers; the largest about 500.

A truck can do 2 containers with 1 driver.

So, an inland ship can do 15-30 times as many containers per crew, compared to a truck.

It seems like a canal with a current could have unmanned pods that behave like items on a conveyor belt. My best guess as to why a cargo belt is that maybe conveyor belts could handle slight elevation changes better than a canal.

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