Japan plans to build a conveyor belt road to transport goods between Osaka and Tokyo. This is a response to a chronic shortage of drivers for large trucks. Would this work here? I’m thinking in limited situations like Baltimore to Cleveland in the NE Corridor, or along the West Coast in California.
I don’t think this will work in Japan, let alone in the US. And a tunnel system proposed in Switzerland is insanely expensive.
This is exactly the problems autonomous trucking in the US is trying to solve. Level 4 automation… point-to-point transport with people at either end to dock the trucks. Unlike Japan’s idea, our system uses existing roads, similar machines towing exactly the same trailers as we use with human drivers. No infrastructure changes nor logistics system changes needed.
Which do you think will be more successful?
Anybody ever worked in a warehouse? ever seen a conveyor belt jam up??
Great idea… lol
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I’m trying to see the advantage of this over rail shipping.
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Every business will deliver boxes from separate factory to 1 shipping location. Thousands of daily deliveries to 1 crowded location. And local govts spend billions adding Lexus express lane (hov) to highways to help 3% of drivers. Japan will spend billions modifying current highway for shipping lane?
They will use existing roads in Japan, sort of. It looks from the article that the conveyor will be in the median strip. Another problem I see is that the container is small: 6’Hx3.5’Wx3.5’L. While a lot of things will fit in that volume, there are a lot that don’t. They can do the research and we can benefit from the results.
Cleveland isn’t in the NE Corridor, and the distance from Baltimore is ~400 miles, including some mountainous terrain. I can’t imagine that a conveyor belt would work in that situation.
Missed a comma after Cleveland. Much of the imports to the Mid-East come through Baltimore. Similarly, their exports go out here.
I agree with other commenters that we have infrastructure to handle transport like this already. Japan’s problem is that they will not have enough truck drivers in the foreseeable future. They also don’t like immigration and I suppose guest workers might fall into that category too.
We made carts that hooked into a plant conveyor. Carts stopped and unhooked where they were programmed to. Still a plant is not a road and think railroads are a better idea.