Six decades after the bullet train first whisked passengers between Tokyo and Osaka, authorities in Japan are planning to do the same for cargo, with the construction of a “conveyor belt road”.
The bullet train is wholly irrelevant here. It does not transport cargo now, does it? Build a fucking freight train line. Every time some tech bro suggests a solution involving pods, a civil engineer has a stroke
I think it does have some cargo space, but not enough to matter in any significant way. IIRC it’s mostly just mail and parcels, but I might be mis-remembering.
Ah - you are correct - they don’t use those lines for freight (I thought they may). Still - Japan has some of the best train networks in the world.
I expect this idea to die. People act like because a thing was suggested or being looked into that it will automatically be done. “Solar Frickin’ Roadways” never went anywhere an this sounds unlikely to as well.
They won’t. Anything on a bullet train line needs to go at a speed of a bullet train. If it goes slower, it slows down the bullet trains on the line.
Cargo does not require bullet train speeds, only passengers do. The added expense does not translate to a better service. Cargo is not time sensitive like people are, so usually freight trains go under 100 km/h. This requires a whole lot less infrastructure and a whole cheaper locomotives and wagon compositions, as locomotives and wagons that go faster are more expensive and require more maintenance.
First friggin’ paragraph…
The bullet train is wholly irrelevant here. It does not transport cargo now, does it? Build a fucking freight train line. Every time some tech bro suggests a solution involving pods, a civil engineer has a stroke
I think it does have some cargo space, but not enough to matter in any significant way. IIRC it’s mostly just mail and parcels, but I might be mis-remembering.
Ah - you are correct - they don’t use those lines for freight (I thought they may). Still - Japan has some of the best train networks in the world.
I expect this idea to die. People act like because a thing was suggested or being looked into that it will automatically be done. “Solar Frickin’ Roadways” never went anywhere an this sounds unlikely to as well.
They won’t. Anything on a bullet train line needs to go at a speed of a bullet train. If it goes slower, it slows down the bullet trains on the line.
Cargo does not require bullet train speeds, only passengers do. The added expense does not translate to a better service. Cargo is not time sensitive like people are, so usually freight trains go under 100 km/h. This requires a whole lot less infrastructure and a whole cheaper locomotives and wagon compositions, as locomotives and wagons that go faster are more expensive and require more maintenance.
They won’t what?
I like how you think you know better than Japan after skimming a simple article lol