[article] Japan is inventing trains
[article] Japan is inventing trains
The Japanese government is planning to connect major cities with automated zero-emissions logistics links that can quietly and efficiently shift millions of tons of cargo, while getting tens of thousands of trucks off the road.
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.
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
Trains-but-worse
Oh boy I love trains-but-worse, their my favorite kind of trains
Seriously why not trains-but-good?
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.
Umm this is Japan…? Is there a place with better trains?
Switzerland
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.
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)
That's why this sounds so ridiculous!
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
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.
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]
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.