Tubing

Contrary to what thought the title gives you, this post is likely not about that thought. Instead this post is about pneumatic tubes. My first experience in seeing a pneumatic tube at work was in the back seat of the Buick Invicta station wagon when I was a child at the bank drive-through. At least I think it was the Invicta, it may have been the red Electra. If recollection serves me correct, the Bank of Sun Prairie first installed a drive-through on the other side of an alley behind the bank, and the pneumatic tubes transferred the banking material from car to the teller and back. There was no direct view of the teller as most have today, and I don’t recall there being any video screens, likely only voice transmission. Fewer trips are made to the bank today, what with credit cards and on-line transactions, but drive-up, or drive-through lanes are now common. In fact, one of the measures of trips generated by a bank is based on number of drive-through lanes. When I do go to the bank I like to go in and visit a teller personally. Where I bank today, their drive-through uses the pneumatic tubes, and voice, but you face straight to a bank (pun intended) of teller windows. Depending upon activity, you may have difficulty knowing who is processing your banking transactions. Pneumatic tubes date back to the mid-18th century, but are still in use today. However, the first thoughts of such a device go back to Greek antiquity and a man named Hero of Alexandria.

This is not the type of tubing to which I refer.
Anyway, this a rather mild form of tubing, and not the usual for the driver of this watercraft.

Pneumatic tubes are based on a rather a simple principle—using a partial vacuum to move a cylinder through a tube from one place to another. They lost favor in the 20th century, due to a variety of factors. Changes in transportation—large trucks, suburbanization, cost of installation, and the need to move ever larger packages. In the 19th and early part of the 20th centuries, development was more compact, and it was less expensive to place a tube from one building, like a post office to a large office building nearby. Some office buildgs used the technology to move mail within a building. Think of the scene in the movie "Elf." As development moved out further, it was no longer cost effective. But now, a variety of entrepreneurs are looking to reintroduce the pneumatic tube as a method of transportation. The intent is not to move mail, but to move people and goods from one city to another. Currently three groups are looking at raising funds and creating a test project. Among those involved is Elon Musk of Tesla car and Space X fame. Musk introduced this concept in 2012, to set forth a faster method of land transit. What is envisioned was a tube, likely a few stories above grade that would extend from Los Angeles to San Francisco, with a bullet-shaped capsule where a massive air compressor would suck air from the front and put it to the back to propel the capsule at designed 760 mph. But it would not be just people, it could be goods as well, at least of a size to fit in the capsule and tube.

Mail tubes

Musk is looking to construct a test loop in Texas, while another group is looking to do one in California. Depending upon cost-effectiveness, they could replace small regional airports like Dane County. Why fly from Madison to Minneapolis for a business trip when you can hop what is called a hyperloop. On the west coast, it is thought that you could leave San Francisco and about 40 minutes later be in LA, but of course you will need to get to and from the station. On the other hand, we have some states embarking on high-speed rail, but nothing that can come close to the speed of the hyperloop. If the hyper loop makes passenger rail a thing of the past, the rail corridors could be put to good use for the hyperloop, and other linear arranged activities. Nationally there has been rails-to-trails for quite some time now, so introducing another linear activity would not be out of the thinking.

Envisioned hyperloop

If hyperloops do become cost-effective perhaps they could become a reality. One estimate is that a ride of a few hundred miles could be accomplished for about $30.  It would cost more to drive that distance, not to mention the amount of time it would take. It likely is still a pipe dream (pun intended), but the challenge is not the movement, but rather the engineering involved in acceleration and deceleration. You cannot get to and down from speed too quickly as it could be hard on the body. It may be more traumatic, however, to get stuck in a tube. Of course, if it were to become reality, would it allow more sprawl to occur? Would the nation be settling in the depths of Montana with people hyperlooping to work in Denver or Seattle? It would pose an interesting use of an old technology, and it may show that not all advances are related to nano-technology. As I like to go inside a bank, I seldom see the pneumatic tubes at work, but the human transport tube may be of more interest than our commonly thought of water tubing.