That’s an interesting idea, but what is the advantage of not using rails?
The existing rail network is already pretty jammed on a lot of lines. Cargo does run at night (mostly) on other rail lines, but night is when maintenance is also done (we don’t really have any 24-hour trains here except on special occasions and I think none of those even since corona). The safety record here does come with a cost in that sense; the checks, maintenance, and construction all occur at night with freight running around that.
If they are adding this in the middle of the expressways, the land is already acquired. It probably takes less infrastructure to do this than putting in rails would involved. I also doubt it would be to code for rails since there needs to be room to get passengers off in the case of emergency, etc. Zooming in on 35.698190871019335, 139.75230458261458 in Tokyo does show there isn’t even really any room between lanes, though, and it’s not different up where I live a few hundred KM north so I’m not exactly sure what the play is. All expressways are paid today and the tolls were supposed to go away eventually, but they never will if the construction never ends (and it never ends).
My guess is it must be at capacity and there’s no space to build a parallel lane next to the tracks. This is conveyor belt so it is constantly moving in both directions with pellets being dropped back and forth. Of course rail industry has been trying to get to the “conveyor belt” idea for sometime but to have one that’s constantly moving both directions isn’t executable.
It says it can fit three cargo pods abreast, so I don’t think that’s the issue.
This is one of those things that reminds me that someone out there is probably doing something cool with that tube shipping system they built in NY forever ago and was forgotten for the most part. (It was like the bank tubes if people aren’t familiar). But traversed miles and miles of tubes! The internet one might say haha
I wonder if it’ll have turrets to fend off the Biters.
Why use the term ‘conveyor belt’? No conveyor. No belts. Automated cargo containers.
“The roads must roll!”
Someone in Japan is a Heinlein fan.
How long before someone packs themselves into a box for a ride, surely some american youtuber will do this.
