Forex

HE crowded Ruhr area of Germany, with 5.5m inhabitants, is famous for its autobahns—and notorious for the convoys of lorries that clog the lanes of those supposedly high-speed arteries. But frustrated motorists who wish to exercise their Teutonic right to speed-limitless driving have an ally. Dietrich Stein, of the Ruhr-University of Bochum, wants to free up the roads by diverting the Ruhr’s freight underground. If his plan succeeds, the road network at the surface will be duplicated by a system of tubes below, inhabited by small vehicles that steer themselves automatically from factories to shops or even to individual homes.

Actually, this is rather an old-fashioned idea. There was a time, in many places, when letters and parcels could be put in capsules and sent through pipelines direct to people’s houses. The capsules were propelled by air and whizzed along tubes from sender to receiver. Pneumatic delivery, as it was known, was commonplace from about 1850 to 1950. The largest system was in Paris, where more than 400km of tubes were laid. Berlin and London had extensive pneumatic systems, too. After 1950, however, the networks gradually closed down, and today only Prague still clings to this Victorian technology.

Dr Stein proposes to revive the idea, but not the actual technology. Instead of compressed air, he will use miniature railways to carry the capsules. His project, CargoCap, would mean building a double pipeline spine, 1.6 metres in diameter and 60-80km long, to connect the main cities of the Ruhr. Spurs from this spine would run to factories and shops. The capsules themselves would travel at 35kph (better than the average speed of traffic in the Ruhr) and each would be able to carry two standard-sized pallets of goods.