Nah. This is different. This is a train with many more points of failure. If any part of a conveyorbelt stops, the whole belt has to halt. And if they use self driving trucks, a failure in any one of the trucks can still cause a traffic jam.

[–] brown567@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

I did notice that upon actually reading the article XD

It's actually just trucks but the entire road is the drivetrain and every truck is driving all the time. If that sounds like "better" to you, then you may be a techbro

[–] jagermo@feddit.org 30 points 4 months ago

So. A long cargo train?

[–] mozz@mbin.grits.dev 23 points 4 months ago

All animals tend towards reinventing crab, all transport solutions tend towards reinventing train

[–] kvasir476@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Japan, you were supposed to deliver us to our train powered future, not leave us in Tesla tunnels.

[–] derpgon@programming.dev 0 points 4 months ago

Actually seems like a good idea. I wonder how long will it take for construction cost to offset regular trucks, but it will get them off the road, and hopefully keep them out of sight.

[–] ilovededyoupiggy@sh.itjust.works 15 points 4 months ago

It's only real if it comes from the Conveyor region in southern France. Everything else is just sparkling trains.

[–] Greg@lemmy.ca 14 points 4 months ago

This idea is so lazy they even used generative AI to create the concept art 😂

[–] catch22@programming.dev 14 points 4 months ago

Uh..trains anyone?

[–] HeartyOfGlass@lemm.ee 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Exactly how it'll do this is yet to be nailed down, but individual pallets will carry up to a ton of small cargo items, and they'll move without human interference from one end to the other.

Someone's been playing Factorio.

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago

Yeah, just gotta use some automatic inserters and splitters.

[–] Audacious@sh.itjust.works 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Tech bro: Trust me, this will work.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

It's basically a train. We have hundreds of years worth of proof that it'll work.

[–] Zron@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

But why are all these companies so obsessed with fucking pods.

Just link the pods together. Have a real train. We know how trains work, we don’t know if these stupid pod things will have any pitfalls.

[–] Anticorp@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

By pods are you talking about the cargo containers? That's already the standard. They get moved from a cargo ship, to a train car, to a truck. It's an efficient system.

The drawback to this thing is that they're replacing the train engine with a series of conveyor belt engines. Which means that there's no downtime for maintenance and repairs unless there are redundant engines on each belt section. They will almost certainly need multiple engines on each section so that they can shut one down and service it while another powers the belts. Another drawback is that if you live behind one of these things it'll be a never-ending engine drone, rather than an occasional train passing by. Another is that they'd be wasting fuel running the belts if there is not much cargo during a given hour. If they're only going to run it when demand is high, then there's literally no point to it. A train already does that.

The benefits are immediately apparent though. There would no longer be a need for elaborate train schedules. Whenever a cargo container is ready to go, you just plop it down on the belt and off it goes. The logistics become much simpler for running the thing. But then how do they know which containers to pull off at given depots? I guess the train schedule logistics get replaced with individual container tracking logistics. Hmm... maybe this thing is pointless. LOL

[–] Rinna@lemm.ee 8 points 4 months ago

Because this is somehow more convenient for everyone than building high speed railways?

[–] Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 8 points 4 months ago

So a train of truck? trackless train?

[–] tenchiken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

[–] southsamurai@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

That was the first thought that popped into my head too :)

[–] bazus1@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

I see Factorio is popular in Japan as well.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Smart. I assume this will reuse the current tracks already used to run Shinkansen trains as they are replaced, which is fantastic.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Why would they use Shinkansen tracks for something so unaerodynamic?

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

They're rebuilding and replacing the aging train fleet and had a bunch of ideas of how to reuse the existing tracks without scrapping them. This might be an answer to that problem.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 points 4 months ago

They’re rebuilding and replacing the aging train fleet and had a bunch of ideas of how to reuse the existing tracks

Ah, makes sense. I was not aware of that.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 3 points 4 months ago

Looks like the engineers at the Tokyo-Osaka prefectures have been playing too much Satisfactory.

To be fair, the idea is interesting, transporting cargo in a way that can be mostly automated is good. The problem is when any part of the automation fails for any reason, like a container getting stuck, things can pile up, fall off or get damaged in a number of ways.