Japan Wants To Build A 311-Mile Cargo Conveyor Belt due a lack of truck drivers

Reminds me of the rue de l'Avenir, a series of parallel moving walkways set at successively higher speeds, used as public transport for the 1900 Exposition in Paris. It moved a surprising amount of people. I expect this conveyor belt has a similarly high capacity.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rue_de_l%27Avenir

The article is misleading, I've read the actual report in Japanese. It's not trying to built Tokyo-Osaka conveyor belt, too expensive, too close the the realm of sci-fi.

What they're trying to do is to use the current trucking between metropolitans -Japan is not eager to just "erase" jobs - then switch to the conveyor belt system connecting into the city. What' they're trying to build, are these switch hubs and the underground conveyor system.

The Roads Must Roll

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll

Why have conveyor belts instead of having more freight trains?

It would be interesting to know the fully baked all-externality cost of it vs alternatives. Tyre rubber, road maintenance, accidents, ship diesel, ports, people, trains, insurance. Anything removing a) complex, expensive moving parts or b) significant externalities or c) people, is a win (except for that jobs thing, but Japan has reducing population). Trains would seem the logical alternative since it touches three big cities on the route, and you could presumably enter/exit multiple places on the route.

Trains can handle some interruption, by orchestrating individual vehicle groups around. Surely for this to be as effective it would need a lot of that. Eg buffers, sidings, minor re-routing around issues. Main difference is the “track” moves, not just the vehicles. So you power and manage the track and the vehicles (shipping containers?) are mostly dumb and just need to be attached to it.

What makes a cargo belt more appealing/better than trains or canals? Just that it's ostensibly more automated and ostensibly needs less maintenance?

Finally, Factorio in real life.

I was thinking this when I first read about the conveyor belt proposal. Years ago, Japan cut down on the hours drivers could do because many were driving too many. So, they tried to get more drivers by making it a career path for more people. Getting licensed to drive and having a life situation where you can be on the road for days is something very few have the ability to do. Add to this the population shrinkage and aging which further hinders this. I can honestly say that this is probably the only solution that will work for this problem. As for rail freight, I think it would be a good idea but as seen with recent linear rail it may be difficult to get anything that would be purpose fulfilling in this regard (yes, Japan has commuter trains but those rails are painfully busy so moving freight is getting more difficult).

In the world of Asimov's I Robot book, conveyor belt walkways are common transportation mechanism. The Japan conveyor belt system can ship both goods and people around.

Love the ambition.

The auto-handing to get freight to destinations is big advantage. This is not about delivering from one end to the other, which is better done by ship, but about sending materials to and from entities within the intensively populated and industrialised region.

Engineering issues include maintenance on the many rollers and other moving parts, wear and tear on the belts, uptime when maintenance is happening and general inefficiency in energy, speed and asset utilisation versus rail.

As Heinlein intended.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Roads_Must_Roll

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40809276

This works pretty well in Factorio and Satisfactory. Low speed automated transport is pretty good for throughput, just not lag.

A step beyond rail.

where I live politics, greed, and the stupidity of the powerful boasted trucks and crippled trains

So we have an intermediate step here

"Due a lack of truck drivers" at the price they are willing to pay. So this is an optimization. That's fine. But optimized systems tend to be fragile. A belt breakdown will be less frequent that a truck problem, but will have a much larger impact.

why not dedicated a highway lane to autonomous trucks?

Or they could allow 25,000 immigrants in with generous incentives to be truck drivers.

Welcome to the reality of not bearing enough children.