[HN Gopher] Cargo sous terrain - Underground cargo train in Swit...
___________________________________________________________________
Cargo sous terrain - Underground cargo train in Switzerland
Author : sschueller
Score : 94 points
Date : 2022-04-29 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cst.ch)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cst.ch)
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| The big competitor to this is autonomous EV trucks. I'm surprised
| that hasn't got more attention. Seems like a game changer.
| secretsatan wrote:
| There's already a big push in Switzerland (And I thik across
| the whole of Europe) to get cargo off roads and onto rail. EV
| trucks still take up room on roads and cause congestion.
| https://www.bav.admin.ch/bav/en/home/modes-of-transport/rail...
| roydivision wrote:
| My thought as well, trucks will always be more flexible, using
| existing road infra. It's hard to see how tunnelling is a
| better idea, cool as it sounds.
| __m wrote:
| With ev trucks you lose tons of freight capacity to the battery
| since the maximum weight of the truck is limited by regulations
| hwillis wrote:
| That's really not a factor. The most popular semi truck in
| America, the Cascadia, is rated for 52,000 lbs GVWR. Kenworth
| T680 has a 64,000 lbs GVWR. Both far short of the 80,000 lbs
| limit.
|
| 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.
| jhugo wrote:
| One goal of a project like this is to reduce the number of
| trucks on the road, which reduce quality of life for people
| living near and using the roads, regardless of what powers
| them.
| Valgrim wrote:
| If there's one thing I would absolutely require a Level 5 Full
| Driving Automation for, it's for freight.
| hkt wrote:
| https://www.carscoops.com/2019/11/tech-genius-steve-
| wozniak-...
|
| Might never happen.
| cloudify wrote:
| Probably because EV trucks would need to go through the current
| Brenner motorway, that is a very trafficked road, from
| Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Pass#Motorway
| ):
|
| 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.
| nick238 wrote:
| There's an alternative to _only_ on motorways and _never_ on
| motorways: _sometimes_ on motorways.
|
| 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.
| Arnt wrote:
| https://www.cst.ch/en/what-is-cst/ makes it sound as if they're
| trying to build small-diameter tunnels like the Boring Company,
| but using the strengths of the format much more cleverly.
|
| 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.
| snickerbockers wrote:
| what happens when something goes wrong (or just needs scheduled
| maintenance) and they have to send a team down to work on it?
| are the workers going to need scuba gear to breathe?
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| My guess would be portable ventilation equipment - already
| commonly used for maintenance access to underground utility
| infrastructure. They will probably need to provide access to
| the tunnels from above at reasonably frequent intervals for
| maintenance access (e.g. to "unstick" disabled vehicles) but
| since these wouldn't be used for evacuation of more than a
| small number of people requirements would be very relaxed.
| The same accesses would serve to run blower ducts when work
| is being performed, and workers would wear gas monitors. This
| is all pretty standard for telecoms tunnels, sewers, etc.
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly. Miners have an elaborate safety setup that doesn't
| have to be anywhere near what passenger tunnels have,
| because the miners can be trained and react to the
| situations as necessary, whereas the best you can hope for
| passengers is they remember the safety briefing and how to
| exit the vehicle quickly.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Also, miners can be told to wait in a safety area with
| supplies stocked for the very predictable amount of
| miners, and so can go a longer without extraction.
|
| Obviously you still want to extract them as quickly as
| possible but it's easier to manage.
| hwillis wrote:
| Why would they? There's nothing consuming the oxygen. You
| don't need scuba gear to go spelunking. The only issue is
| removing heat, and you probably don't need much airflow to do
| that.
| rtkwe wrote:
| There are all sorts of ways for the environment to become
| toxic; loads of chemical reactions consume oxygen [0],
| gases leaking from the ground could displace the oxygen eg
| Xenon gas, etc. Even without those over time maintenance
| crews will consume the air in an area through both
| respiration and equipment work.
|
| [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.
| jhgb wrote:
| Inert gas in an automated subterranean cargo transportation
| network could be interesting, though. No risk of fire?
| numtel wrote:
| It's closer to what Magway is doing in Britain
|
| https://www.magway.com/
| tbihl wrote:
| I think your ventilation notion is wrong because intensive use
| of this infrastructure will mean many, many electric motors
| generating heat. There will also be refrigerated cars,
| furthering the problem. Having said that, I strongly suspect
| that they've incorporated the ventilation solution already.
|
| >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.
| hwillis wrote:
| a 95% efficient electric motor is still creating 15x less
| heat than a diesel engine, and zero carbon dioxide. Traffic
| will carry out hot air, heat will leave through the tunnel
| walls, and convection will also carry out heat. At the very
| least it is a MUCH less relevant issue.
| koolba wrote:
| And any cargo container that requires stricter temperature
| tolerances itself be better insulated and refrigerated.
| That's already how standard containers pulled by
| 18-wheelers operate.
| hwillis wrote:
| OP's point with refrigerated containers is that they are
| large sources of heat (since creating a cold volume heats
| up the external volume by a larger amount), not that they
| are more vulnerable to heat in the tunnel.
| panick21_ wrote:
| People act like Boring tunnel are designed to only ever allow
| single Tesla threw.
|
| 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?
| Arnt wrote:
| Ventilating well enough to cope with electric motors sounds
| much less demanding than coping with having both combusion
| engines and humans in the tunnels.
|
| Not to mention letting the humans escape alive in case a
| vehicle crashes and burns.
| arinlen wrote:
| > Ventilating well enough to cope with electric motors
| sounds much less demanding than coping with having both
| combusion engines and humans in the tunnel.
|
| 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?
| robonerd wrote:
| > _How do you plan to perform inspections, maintenance,
| and even emergency support when a cart breaks down and
| blocks your tunnel?_
|
| With pigs of course. Not the ones that go oink though:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigging
| hwillis wrote:
| The acceptable conditions for "workers in the tunnel
| performing regular maintenance" and "a continuous stream
| of random people" are pretty different. Probably >10x
| less requirement for fresh air when >100x fewer people
| are breathing it. Ambient humidity might be lower, and
| even if it isn't the temperature only has to be workable
| rather than comfortable or at ambient. Worst case, you
| could shut everything down and let it cool off before
| sending people in.
|
| 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.
| moralestapia wrote:
| Yup.
|
| "Must be safe for humans" always shifts the costs an order
| of magnitude.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The London Underground actually has a heat problem despite
| using electric propulsion.
|
| Most of the heat in that situation comes from braking.
| Valgrim wrote:
| I'm not sure heat is such a problem. The movement of the
| cargo provides ample ventilation, the surrounding soil has a
| great thermal mass, and in the worst case it's easier to pump
| coolant through a pipe than to ensure a breathable, non-toxic
| atmosphere at all time.
| aaron695 wrote:
| arinlen wrote:
| > https://www.cst.ch/en/what-is-cst/ makes it sound as if
| they're trying to build small-diameter tunnels like the Boring
| Company, but using the strengths of the format much more
| cleverly.
|
| 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.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Claiming Boring is only a marketing company is not accurate.
| Even the first maschine they used was modified. The are are
| building their own now and they just raised 600M to finish
| engineering on Prufrock-3 and go into real production.
|
| 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.
| jhgb wrote:
| > as it's just a marketing company who bought a COTS
| tunneler.
|
| 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| They have two now apparently, one in California and one in
| Texas. But public information on these is sparse, I've not
| been able to find out much about them. This seems
| uncharacteristic for an Elon Musk company; Musk and SpaceX
| talk at length about their rockets for instance. There is a
| different level of public interest between rockets and
| boring, which might explain why there is more public
| information about the rockets. Still, I'm not surprised
| people are skeptical (or ignorant to the existence) of
| these bores.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> There is a different level of public interest between
| rockets and boring
|
| 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.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _This is ancient technology, literally over a century
| old.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway_
|
| 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.
| graupel wrote:
| Reminds me of the 2' wide electric trains that moved cargo under
| the Chicago loop for many years:
| https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/collex/exhibits/under-your-feet...
| griffinkelly wrote:
| I have a friend of mine who works for the city and he's been
| able to go into the tunnels. He was working on a big repair
| project on one because it flooded--they were sealing it and
| pumping the water out.
| marstall wrote:
| cooler and more sensible notion of underground transit than that
| promoted by mr musk!
| tbihl wrote:
| This reminds me of when they opened the Gotthard Base Tunnel
| maybe 5 years ago. It replaced an old mountain railway that
| connected the North and South ends of the country, and did so at
| great expense connecting by a straight tunnel that made the route
| much faster. It takes an incredibly prosperous and stable place
| to make achieve that increment of improvement. And this feels
| like more of that same story.
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| The US has many projects in the $9 billion range, but many of
| them we never hear about because they're not all that
| technically interesting, and much of the US is pretty easy to
| rail over.
|
| For example, who knows or cares about the Alameda corridor?
| https://www.acta.org even though it transfers tons of freight
| every single day.
| johnday wrote:
| With no disrespect, there's something quite funny about a
| freight corridor moving _tons_ of freight every day. In the
| "there are dozens of us!" way.
| bombcar wrote:
| Heh if their TEUs are mostly laden they're moving 300,000
| tons inside LA every day, which is pretty close to a metric
| fuckton.
| arinlen wrote:
| > This reminds me of when they opened the Gotthard Base Tunnel
| maybe 5 years ago. (...) It takes an incredibly prosperous and
| stable place to make achieve that increment of improvement. And
| this feels like more of that same story.
|
| 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.
| sschueller wrote:
| The GBT cost almost 10 billion. Still way less than the 22
| Billion the big dig in Boston cost that put the highway under
| the city. Initial estimate was 2.8 Billion.
|
| Meanwhile the city of Zurich 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...
| robonerd wrote:
| It's not clear from your phrasing whether you know this
| already, but America has an extensive freight rail network
| already. It's the best in the world in fact. More than 40% of
| all freight in America uses rail, while in Europe it's less
| than 20%.
|
| 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.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Freight volume is one story. The comparison is a lot less
| generous when you compare freight by value.
|
| 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| The rail lines are there, regardless of what they're used
| for. Whatever structural problems exist in this domain
| aren't addressed by building more more freight rail.
| ithkuil wrote:
| > It takes an incredibly prosperous and stable place to make
| achieve that increment of improvement.
|
| fwiw, the Italy and Austra (with EU contribution) are building
| a similar in the same mountain range a few km eastwards
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenner_Base_Tunnel
| tbihl wrote:
| I have very little knowledge of Italy or Austria (pretty
| little of Switzerland, for that matter), but I gather that
| Italy can reasonably be understood as a very stable place in
| exactly the opposite way that the US is stable. Italian
| places seem very stable, but the wider governance is not
| enduring, whereas much of the US is held together by a strong
| national government despite the fact that the places are
| constantly in flux with most places built cheaply and not for
| permanence.
|
| 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.
| seszett wrote:
| > My read of GBT and this new CST system is that both are
| private ventures
|
| 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.
| rscho wrote:
| Swiss railways are 51% state-owned, methinks.
| rjsw wrote:
| There is another base tunnel being built to the southwest
| [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mont_d%27Ambin_Base_Tunnel
| lom wrote:
| This is dumb. Another one of those trains but less-efficient and
| more costly. Digging tunnels is expensive, even more so across an
| entire country. Taking out ventilation or escape routes will cut
| the price, yes - but not enough. And what if something happens
| inside the tunnel, batteries aren't famed for their
| incombustibility...
| gspr wrote:
| I'd normally agree with you, but I don't think you fathom how
| incredibly starved for space Swiss logistics is. There are
| densely populated parts of the country where logistics capacity
| is maxed out, but where there's no more space on roads or to
| build more warehouses. My understanding is that the CST sprung
| out of those problems.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| It's Switzerland, tunnels there always have the secondary use
| of being usable as bunkers in a war. Also... it's Switzerland,
| half the country is mountains. These guys know how to build
| tunnels for cheap, if anyone can scale this to being cheap
| enough it's them.
| zinekeller wrote:
| Im concurring with you and dissenting with lom. Switzerland
| is very mountainous that trains laid on the surface will
| actually be a very _very_ stupid proposition, with active
| gearing and such and with reduced cargo weight to match. Yes,
| they have indeed perfected trains on rugged slopes, but only
| because back then tunneling is a very slow and manual
| operation that it 's not economically and technologically
| feasible. Lom would be right if the mountains are gentler
| slopes, but I think lom haven't visited the Alps and
| appreciate the problem. In this case, the tunnels are
| actually a far better and more economical solution than
| overground trains.
| stardenburden wrote:
| Interesting perspective. I have been to the Alps several
| times, and do realize how limiting it can be. That's the
| reason the CBT and Gotthard base Tunnel is so important and
| plays such a central role. The problems start there,
| upgrading these two massive pieces of infrastructure to
| support these new types of trains (also note the vendor
| lock in through novel systems) would be costly and probably
| not possible without delays for current freight.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Trains are great, but are losing out to trucks, so I think
| there's a lot of promise in "trains, but small" approaches,
| even if none of them have taken off so far.
|
| 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.
| arinlen wrote:
| > Trains are great, but are losing out to trucks (...)
|
| 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.
| stardenburden wrote:
| Building entirely new infrastructure around an entire country
| for something that can already be achieved by more
| traditional means is a huge misallocation of money.
|
| > 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...
| hwillis wrote:
| > even more so across an entire country.
|
| The website is very clear that the intent is for these tunnels
| to be dug underneath cities, to relieve traffic burden from
| road distribution.
| exabrial wrote:
| Ah I see: poke holes in the ground, much like Swiss cheese.
| paganel wrote:
| Even more things consumed won't help with climate change, quite
| the contrary, otherwise nice little project.
| kortilla wrote:
| Is there a way for a train geek to score a ride on a cargo train
| with the engineer?
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| Building new trains is always great, but I'm curious why they
| chose to go for what appears to be a small loading gauge, thus
| preventing them from using shipping containers.
|
| 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?
| kkfx wrote:
| I'm always skeptical to such big-infra projects for a reason:
| they are not flexible. We design something today that will be
| ready after more than a decade on scale hoping to have correctly
| projected future needs.
|
| 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?
| Markoff wrote:
| Not a train, it doesn't have railway tracks, even on website they
| call it "vehicle" since it has regular wheels.
|
| Also they PLAN to start operation in 2031, which is so far it
| might as well never happen.
| markvdb wrote:
| Swiss time, not Musk time.
|
| Sorry, couldn't resist.
| sschueller wrote:
| The Gotthard Base Tunnel was voted on in 1992 and work started
| in 1999. It was finished 2016. Switzerland plans very long
| ahead into the future even for local transportation systems. A
| lot of time is invested in planning which pays out big time in
| the end.
|
| This project is under evaluation in some Cantons (St. Gallen
| and Thurgau) for viability and may never be completed.
| scarier wrote:
| I'm always amazed every time someone tried really hard to invent
| new technology that's just a worse train. I love the overall
| concept, but damn they're making it way more complicated than it
| needs to be.
| kumarsw wrote:
| I recall someone (possibly Adam Something on YouTube
| complaining about a similar idea) coining the term "Not a
| Train" to describe concepts such as Hyperloop and this, the
| idea being that they are (1) futuristic and exiting and (2)
| because they are different, allow for arguments that the
| upfront costs will be much lower than trains, whose costs are
| well studied and known to be high.
|
| 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
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The problem with trains is that you need large signalling
| blocks and distances between trains and blocks for safety
| reasons - a fully loaded freight train can have a braking
| distance of well over 1.000 meters, and accelerating and
| decelerating them takes a lot of time and energy. Also,
| shunting carriages between trains takes up lots of space for
| the yards, a lot of time to couple/uncouple and verify the
| correct operation of the brakes.
|
| 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.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I can't comment on the Swiss, but in the US if you live
| next to a dedicated freight line, the train company can and
| will send trains through at all hours of the night and the
| only thing you can do about it is find somewhere else to
| live. CSX, Union Pacific, BNSF, etc could not care less
| about noise complaints.
|
| 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]
|
| [0] https://biotinker.dev/posts/seismograph.html
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| My personal experience was that after a few weeks I just
| ignore it and sleep through all the noise. The actual
| train itself was very quiet because of how slow it moved.
| The real issue was they are required to blow the train
| horn multiple times at each road crossing. This is
| extremely loud, since it is a horn.
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| If the residents in an area get together with their local
| government and work with the railroad, they can often get
| the crossings covered to a no-horn Quiet Zone.
|
| 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...
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| This was in Alabama. The local government is generally
| interested in hookers or embezzling funds.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| In Europe, most railways are mixed between freight and
| passenger trains - in some cases, you have everything
| from high-speed long distance trains, regional trains,
| city trains and freight trains on the same set of tracks.
|
| 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.
| anonAndOn wrote:
| If you put your house in the acoustic shadow of a tall
| cinder block wall with a row of trees behind it, you can
| deflect a great deal of that noise. Build it for shade,
| just not from the sun.
| jcrawfordor wrote:
| A conventional train and close headways are not an either-
| or proposition. Freight trains can (and do in places)
| operate under computerized moving block systems that allow
| for headway as short as relative braking distance.
| Automatic train operation with moving blocks is a
| relatively mature technology available from a couple of
| major vendors.
|
| 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.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Trains are great for bulk transport. If you want to ship the
| daily output of a steel mill or move a military division
| worth of vehicles, trains are unbeatable. But if you want to
| ship less than a couple of train cars worth of stuff, they
| quickly lose out to trucks. That's the market most of these
| "not a train"s are targeting.
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| Much of US rail is literally trucks on trains - not even
| containers but actual trailers.
|
| 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.
| willyt wrote:
| I think the innovation is the removal of manual handling
| involved in transferring goods to a train or between trucks at
| a logistics hub. By making the modules small enough that they
| will ultimately be able to trundle autonomously at low speed
| from the loading bay at a small factory to the hub and then
| travel at relatively high speed to the end destination without
| requiring sophisticated AI to guess what the humans around it
| will do. The modules can pop then pop up in dense city centre
| environments and postal workers can distribute parcels the last
| few hundred meters or the module can trundle autonomously for
| the last few hundred meters at very low speeds on battery
| power. Or likewise trundle around and between manufacturing
| areas at low speeds transporting parts along a supply chain.
| jsnell wrote:
| That's not what this is though. These carriages will just be
| going from delivery hub to delivery hub. The deliveries to
| hubs will be by trucks.
|
| 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 Zurich.
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Once upon a time, motors were incredibly expensive. Not just
| the motors, but the logistics for the motors. The care and
| feeding of a coal burning steam engine requires lots of space
| and people with shovels.
|
| 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.
| bombcar wrote:
| Most US trains have a locomotive engineer and a conductor in
| the lead cab, and the rest of the power units are remotely
| controlled and unmanned. That's two employees on the train
| for 3800 tons of freight.
|
| 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.
| folkrav wrote:
| How is this a worse train?
| scarier wrote:
| Because it needs far more complicated and expensive cars for
| no real benefit.
| ddalex wrote:
| The benefit is the modularity - trains don't solve the last
| mile problem, individually router containers on autonomous
| drives do.
| yakak wrote:
| This is not a real last mile solution either. We once had
| the almost the same level of modularity by detaching cars
| in motion and letting them coast..
|
| 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.
| scarier wrote:
| CST isn't built to solve the last mile problem either--it
| explicitly shows cargo being delivered to and picked up
| from central hubs.
| go_elmo wrote:
| have you factored in the cost of human labor in your judgement?
| I mean swiss-level salaries. Thats 4k+ usd / month for retail
| workers. Thats what makes autonomous infrastructure cheaper in
| the long run than having anyone loading anything on an already
| overcrowded train net.
| scarier wrote:
| The issue isn't how automated it is-- it's easy to automate
| trains and automatically load pallets. Making each car
| responsible for autonomous navigation in two dimensions and
| self-loading becomes a much more complicated engineering
| problem.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| More like 7-8k/month if you count true employer's expenses on
| average employee for persons operating & maintaining complex
| machineries/connected IT systems.
| andbberger wrote:
| just as dumb as all of the other 'definitely not a train'
| startups, but what makes this one particularly funny is that
| switzerland already has the best freight rail system in the
| world.
| noxer wrote:
| I hope they use it to transport garbage or stuff to recycle with
| any free capacity. All the diesel trucks that just move garbage
| around is such a waste of resources.
| Animats wrote:
| This is very strange. Long distance tunnels for small cargoes.
|
| 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.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company
| rtkwe wrote:
| This could move packages and mail easily. Those are already
| containerized, packed and repacked multiple times as they move
| through the mail system. Larger shipments could be palletized
| to a form that fits inside these vehicles and be quickly moved
| too.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| For those learning French who might be puzzled by the spelling,
| the correct french word for something underground is "souterrain"
| (it is also a noun for an underground tunnel). Probably they
| chose that spelling to suggest that it is not cargo buried
| underground, or something illegal (there's that meaning too, like
| "underground economy": _economie souterraine_ ).
| rosetremiere wrote:
| Anyone knows the relation with the swissmetro project (see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro though it very much
| reads like an ad) ?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-04-29 23:00 UTC)