310-mile automated cargo conveyor will replace 25,000 trucks in Japan

There are a lot of doubters in the threads here and I think a lot of it has to do with the generative art that accompanies the article. They haven't picked a technology and it may actually end up being driverless cars on dedicated lanes, or automated rail technology. The point is non-stop driverless tech. The country is very well aware of the coming labor shortage and is going to rely heavily on automation in the future.

Anyone who has ever stepped on a Shinkansen can understand that Japan has a way of getting shit done. It may start a bit later than other countries, but when they finally decide to execute (and this is still in planning stages so it might not), it happens surprisingly quickly.

I've watched them totally revamp Shibuya station over the past 10 years in ways that make it utterly unrecognisable to someone who hasn't been here since then, all while never taking down-time. There is another article on the HN front page titled "Why it takes NYC nearly 10 years to install 500 feet of pipes" right now... that's perhaps coloring people's expectations of the possible.

The problem is to move small cargo between Tokyo and Osaka (500 km).

They end up choosing rail or light rail. Other options are just early spitballing for PR like they always do. They might go for narrow rails if land use is important. Steel rolling on steel track is just too good solution for that distance.

Other proposals like carts on a tunnel, converter belts are too slow or too expensive if fast enough. Having small carts move on wheels just wears down the wheels in no time. Same for conveyor belts. The cost of rail per km is cheaper than alternatives. They may end up loading wheeled carts on the train and wheel them off at destination, but they don't run them for 500 km.

The all other options listed are just for show and PR.

There is a reason that freight trains are a thing.

Clearly someone has been playing too much satisfactory and not enough factorio

Original article: https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/business/economy/20240623-19...

Much better than the "AI" spamming, regurgitated garbage that's the current link.

Also, since neither article mentions it: The chief driver (pun not intended) behind this is new work regulations drastically limiting how many hours a truck driver can work. It's been called the "2024 Problem" because the law came into effect this year upending their trucking industry.

Each image has "pictured using generative tools" in the caption. I'm glad they are upfront about it not being a true idea of the concept, but I don't understand why New Atlas would use misleading GenAI images to when the Japan News article^1 has an informative graphic. The exaggeration in the text also makes me doubt their interpretation of the source article. It makes a lot of claims about self-driving capabilities and population decline that barely seem supported.

[1] https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/business/economy/20240623-19...

To all those snidely commenting about trains or rail: Do you think that Japan, of all places, is not familiar with railways? The article states that this is for palletized or small-package loads. Give them some credit.

This won't actually happen. It's a "we're doing something about it" project that will spend a lot of money on planning and then not pan out (obviously, since the very premise is ludicrous).

Then they can say they're doing something about the shrinking worker problem and call it a day. No one need be shamed.

Looks related to what Swissmetro wanted to do in Switzerland: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro Except that its not underground

Afaik, the project looks dead?

Reminds me of Robert A. Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll"[0] where highways were replaced by 100 mph moving sidewalks. It will be a bad day if some segments of the conveyor belt has issues and they need to take time to find alternative transport, not to mention large portions of the 310 miles of cargo stuck on there depending on where things go wrong.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll

If the trucks are used for last mile, as long as you have the same number of end destinations, don't you still need roughly the same amount of trucks? I'm assuming in trucking short-haul the largest amount of times are in receiving / dropping cargo and shortening the distance by 100 km doesn't make much difference but maybe it does?

In my mental model the trucks just have to go "somewhere else" to pick up the cargo, which might be a bit closer, but that's it?

Hey, this worked for me in Factorio (trains instead), I'm sure it could work here as well!

The Swiss CST (Cargo Sous Terrain aka. Cargo Under Ground) is planning to have a first 70km tunnel between a major cargo hub (Härkingen) and the biggest city (Zürich) in Switzerland by 2031. The automated vehicles should to be driving some 30km/h. In the long term a underground system of 500km between the biggest cities is planned.

https://www.cst.ch/

and various other media articles

They’re looking for proposals, the title is misleading

> One possibility is to use massive conveyor belts to cover the 500-km (310-mile) distance between the two cities, running alongside the highway or potentially through tunnels underneath the road. Alternatively, the infrastructure could simply provide flat lanes or tunnels, and the pallets could be shifted by automated electric carts.

The headline saying that it "will" do something, but not having any actual images or even a concept sketch is a little concerning

I found the official Ministry documents page in Japanese[0]. Looks like it's more like dedicated closed freeway system for fixed-programmed autonomous semi trucks, than actual 500km-long belt. Whether it's going to be rubber tired or metal wheeled is at least officially left TBD for now.

Funny detail: Asahi Beer is asking in a slightly roundabout way to make it able to handle heavy objects and beverage-specific pallets, with a picture of a metal beer tank for illustration. They haven't decided if it's ever built or where depots will be - but it must carry beer IF they're going to do it!

0: https://www.mlit.go.jp/road/ir/ir-council/buturyu_douro/inde...

The AI images are completely wrong - these show full containers rather than single pallets.

This seems insane.

Surely just use self-driving trains.

Even a dedicated rail link or even a whole network would be much, much cheaper than a conveyor, which are also notoriously unreliable and would halt the entire system on every fault.

Imagine the savings in construction and maintenance costs if you could simplify the conveyor sections to be just two parallel iron rods.

there's already trains that do a lot of freight. Not sure what's the point of building this kind of things. Except getting into more debt?

Electric carts on a track. Oh so it's trains. They invented trains again.

I wish we had some form of "TCP/IP" over rail, where the "packets" are containers or pallets...

Everyone is missing the point. It's not the form of the conveyor that matters it's the loading and unloading system. You need a set of standardised parcel sized containers first. Then you can design robotic handling equipment that can load and unload them easily. You can take the containers and feed them into your postal system and gradually automate more parts of the system reliably once you have standard reusable containers, bonus points if the containers are collapsible like some crates you get for fresh produce. You can imagine them clicking magnetically into totems on the street where they could be collected robotically more easily. Or in high traffic locations you might feed them hole in the wall that takes them into an underground system of some kind that transports them to a rail or truck depot. You can also imagine that parcels services might be reintroduced on local trains because you don't need an extra person to load and unload the containers at stations if this can be done robotically. There are endless possibilities for varying degrees of automation, but the key thing is that there has to be a standard interface for picking up a container of a known size. The parcel is the interface; the physical specifications of the standard containers are analogous to an API.

The technology already exists for this in airports[0][1]; when you check in a bag in a big modern airport after the gate agent sticks the sticker on the handle it won't be touched again by a human until it gets chucked into the aircraft hold. Your bag goes through the curtain and it is dropped into a standard bucket which is conveyed around under the concourse on a rollercoaster like automated rail system to screening then either to an automated vehicle for transfer between terminal buildings or to an automated storage system for people who have checked in too early or have a long transfer, finally to the stand/ramp for loading into the aircraft. Big international airports like Amsterdam Schipol, Paris Charles de Gaul, Madrid Barrajas and Heathrow all have systems like this.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVesQ07GrRY&list=PLWwq_41dNV... edit: [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cac411oBqSE&t=57s

Oh yeah, what could go wrong in such mega-project.......

In IT we learnt that mainframes was gem of tech but it's better to build many cheap desktops in cluster... In the aerospace mega-planes are mostly relic of the past because yes their single fly is cheaper but all the rest is much more expensive then using far less big planes. In the naval sector large oil tankers are essentially a relic of the past for similar + environmental reasons. Semi-abandoned office towers and some construction engineers state the same for big buildings https://www.israel21c.org/skyscrapers-are-huge-mistakes-warn... curiously for certain big things, built by the private sector but paid by the public, the private involved disagree...

Imagine that the conveyor can also transport passengers in funny carriages.

I’ll believe it when I see it

This is satire. Right? Right?!?