- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
- cross-posted to:
- futurology@futurology.today
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Trains-but-worse
Oh boy I love trains-but-worse, their my favorite kind of trains
Seriously why not trains-but-good?
Umm this is Japan…? Is there a place with better trains?
The fact that it’s Japan (a place with a damn good rep for trains) planning to make a giant conveyor system between 2 cities rather than a freight line is what’s so shocking to me.
They’re going to have to clear a lot of stuff for a big conveyor system why not do it properly and go with freight trains?
Trains are a tried and true method of moving freight, they have a bunch of skilled engineers already versed in trains, they have all the necessary industry for getting the parts for those trains built, etc, etc. This just screams stupid AF and wasteful AF to me.
They’re going to have to clear a lot of stuff for a big conveyor system why not do it properly and go with freight trains?
They would have to do the exact same thing for trains, though. Do you have any comments on the actual differences in the projects, or do you only have (probably rightfully-placed, but still) knee-jerk reactions to your favorite vehicle?
I see you stopped reading my comment there.
I listed some reasons in the comment literally right after that.
I listed some reasons in the comment literally right after that.
“Trains already exist” doesn’t address literally any part of the other project. Horses existed before cars, too.
Although I agree that other forms of transport should be considered, I genuinely can’t figure out how either a conveyor belt or autonomous carts could be better than a freight train. Both for battling decreasing manpower and for intercity freight transport.
I think both proposed ideas are better for short-distance transport, with conveyor belts better for a single direction of movement in indoor (or as the article mentions, tunnel) conditions (must be kept clear of debris in order to run, more so than track which only needs to be cleared before the next train) and autonomous carts better for transporting small packages between many origins and destinations (eg. a warehouse or maybe delivery service).
Conveyor belts might also require much more maintenance, as moving parts would be all along the length of the belt.
Switzerland.
Japan has outstanding high speed rail but that’s pretty much it. Local train servives are, from what I’ve heard, subpar in terms of frequency. The share of goods transported via rail is also comparatively low.
Check out these numbers and sort by each colum, Switzerland is always near the top (for population/size adjusted values)
Your link doesn’t show Switzerland at the top except their network is completely electric.
Having been to both countries without a car, Japan is not subpar in terms of local services. They’re very different though because they have such different size and population densities.
Switzerland has:
- the lowest amount of area per km of track, except for micro nations
- a fairly low amount of population per km of track - among the top 10 if population density is considered
- lost less than 10% of tracks since its historical peak
- a majority nationalized rail network
- (as you mentioned) a fully electrified network
While I haven’t travelled in Japan by rail (or any other mode), I have been to Switzerland. From what I’ve heard, in Japan there are many smaller local stations, where an ancient train arrives a few times a day.
Whereas in Switzerland, it seems like nearly every local station has at least one train per hour.
It is true that in Japan there are many local stations that only arrive a few times a day, but I’ve found that this is generally for places that are very low traffic; ala middle of nowhere Fukushima countryside train. I’m usually more surpised the train system even goes there than I am surprised by the frequency. For pretty much anywhere you’d expect local trains to exist, they’re usually very good. Not trying to compare countries or anything (I’ve never been to Switzerland). Just describing my experience in Japan (not expert; only lived there ~6mo)
But Switzerland has these tiny local stations too.
For example, this one:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alp_Grüm_railway_station
It’s a tiny station with 440 passengers per weekday - yet it seems that two train lines, one of which is hourly stop there. Most of the passengers are likely commuters, so the bulk of all passengers will be during morning and evening rush hour. Outside these hours, hardly anyone uses this station I believe - yet trains still stop there.
(Note: I have just searched for “Least used train stations Switzerland” and picked a random result, this might be an exception. But it goes to show that stations with few passengers still get a lot of connections.)
As I said, I’m not trying to compare or enter a discussion about what system is better, since I’ve never been to Switzerland. I like it when places have good trains, and it sounds like both places have that. So that’s good enough for me. I was just replying to give you a better idea of what it’s like in Japan.
That’s why this sounds so ridiculous!
Switzerland
I’m pretty sure that roller belts, while useful at moving lighter items, wouldn’t do so well if they had to deal with freight boxes.
A 500km tunnel would be only $23B, and they call that wildly expensive?
Let me introduce you to a 1.5k tunnel for $22B
Here’s one which is actually being built: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Rail_Link
$5.5 billion (NZD) for 3.5 km
pictured using generative tools
So now it’s not just “bad CGI idea”, it’s “bad CGI idea generated by AI”.
Next up: people investing billions in said cool looking bad CGI project only to find out none of it works and after wasting half a decade, they’ll come to the conclusion that they’ll need to invent a large transportation system with metal wheels that will run on a specialized track where you can add or remove carts as needed.
It’s so bad that we don’t have any of this yet!
Seriously, fuck Elon Musk for getting these scams popularized
Reading a few articles about this, it seems a big concern is area. They wanna squeeze them in every free space they have between and around roads. Conveyor belts can probably do a lot sharper curves etc. than railways. If they do special small rails, they’ll also need special trains for that.
From the articles it’s also not clear if it’s from one point to another point or from multiple to multiple. They talk about deliveries, which would rather be multi to multi, but it’s not explicitly mentioned anywhere.
Hmmmm I’m still skeptical mind you, but hear me out …
What if there’s benefits to be had by the traction motors being stationary, the electrical connections being fixed instead of moving contacts (read: not 3rd rail or overhead catenary), and the simplicity of containers not being all connected for easy removal from the conveyor without disrupting the movement of other containers?
Mind you I can’t imagine how this system can operate at reasonable speeds vs cargo trains that apparently hit 100km/h in Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_Freight_Trains_(Japan) ) but surely my imagination isn’t good enough.
I don’t think speed is the thing we need to concentrate on anymore. You could have this country spanning convayer belt essentially, and power it all with solar. Thereby reducing pollution by a HUGE amount within Japan.
And hopefully other European countries will follow. Then we’d have to deal with the beast that is North America. Large sprawling land, both in Canada, and America. Especially America would be difficult. Canada probably has an entire unused northern half. Whereas America doesn’t really have much unused open space in the eastern half. And it’s just sooooooo big.
I have zero faith this will ever come to America. Too much politics. Too much zoning issues. Too much distance.
But it should work great in Japan and Europe.
I won’t agree or disagree with the speed comment, you could very well be correct.
As for powering by solar in Japan (and any other currently electrified system), I would guess that’s easily done right now by changing how their power is generated; and that doesn’t require a change in the system, just the generation. In japan around 66% of their rail is already electrified (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_electrification_in_Japan look at the summary box showing total miles and electrified miles). So I’m still skeptical that a conveyor system is the answer vs adding more electrified rail in that same strip of land and powering it with solar generation. But again, maybe there’s something to be gained with such a different engineering solution per my OP.
And while you’re spot on for the US (less than 1% from my google search) a conveyor won’t solve it sadly unless there’s something about that which makes it cheaper to deploy then adding a catenary system to our current railways.
A train sends 100 cargo boxes from town A to B in an hour. It takes 4 hours to put all the boxes in, and 5 hours to pull the boxes off the train and stack them in the yard
Conveyer sends 1 box every 6 minutes for 10 hours.
Same throughput, but one is easier to schedule workers around at both ends. I’ve never worked in a train yard or anything, don’t know how accurate my time frames are or anything, just trying to imagine what’s better about this.
Hmmm certainly something to think about. Like I said, skeptical but also asking about what I hadn’t thought of [cheers]
