The thing glided out of the industrial shed. It was awkward. It was bulky. It had the body of a truck and the nose of Adrien Brody, with an ad for Texas produce in the middle.
Welcome to Bryan, Texas, where the full-size prototype of the self-driving Freight Shuttle System debuted last month. The work of Texas A&M's Texas Transportation Institute doesn't have the future-y gloss of the Hyperloop, the Muskian transportation solution that would fling people and stuff through tubes at 700 mph. But its makers promise it's the near-er future of moving things around, a pragmatic way to start clearing the 15.5 million heavy-duty trucks from American roads.
So you can see why, a few days after seeing prototype last month, the Port of Houston finalized a deal to evaluate its implementation in the city.
This ugly duckling, the product of 12 years of work (and 17 patents) by Texas-based Freight Shuttle International and Texas A&M, is a new answer to a stubborn spatial quandary. America’s biggest cities grew up around ports, but the people who glommed onto the economic generators that are trade and the sea make it tough to move stuff out of port and to the folk who need (well, ordered) it.
It's a growing problem: Container trade through US ports swelled by 78 percent between 2000 and 2015.
There are two standard responses: build rail tracks straight to ports (Port of Houston has a railhead) or use trucks to haul the crud to railcars or distributors a bit farther inland. Both create problems for nearby communities. In March, a judge halted a $50 million rail expansion near the Port of Los Angeles, saying the project hadn’t adequately accounted for bothersome increases in traffic, noise, and pollution.
Some 14,000 trucks move 11,000 containers around the Ports of LA and Long Beach every day.
So port authorities are looking for innovative solutions. Hyperloop One, the biggest player in the race to bring Musk's vision to life (also the one with the funky legal issues), is targeting freight as a starting point. "We get very focused on the people, because that's the emotional side of the story," CEO Rob Lloyd told WIRED last year. “But there's as powerful an economic story and transformative story about what we do with freight." The company is running feasibility studies at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, and at Dubai’s Jebel Ali port.
Lloyd says his company will have three running lines by 2020, but there's reason to doubt his bravado. There's a lot of engineering work left, and no evidence the finances will work out. Why would people send their stuff on a newfangled maglev contraption that requires a ton of new infrastructure when airports already exist? Does cargo *need *to move at 500 mph?
The Freight Shuttle System, with its lame name and brutalist looks, offers a more sober solution. Nothing levitates or flirts with the sound barrier. Instead, each transporter glides along on flangeless steel wheels, thanks to two linear-induction motors. At speeds of up to 65 mph, each shuttle could convey 70,000 pounds, standard for one tractor-trailer. But the lack of a driver promises low labor costs. The narrow guideway that fits in highway medians means tricky land use issues can be worked out with the state, easier than fighting private citizens.
Because it’s powered by electricity instead of exploding diesel, the shuttle is much, much quieter than any truck. It also spews a lot less pollution. Heavy trucks are responsible for 20 percent of US transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions, though they make up just five percent of the vehicles on the road. If the electricity comes from renewable sources, this entire freight system could be zero emission.
This thing isn’t coming after the entire freight market. It's targeting the short-haul industry, the 70 percent of trucks that take goods 500 miles or fewer, usually to the closest railway or distribution center. Along with the Port of Houston, other authorities in the US and abroad have approached the company about bringing the shuttle to their own ports, says Steve Roop, Freight Shuttle International’s president and lead designer. (He’s also a research scientist with A&M.)
Still, the Freight Shuttle System faces issues, funding not the least of them---the infrastructure will cost between $12 and $13 million per mile. (Hyperloop One's Lloyd says his project would cost $10 million per mile.) And the cargo-hauling sector is far from a money-minting slam-dunk.
"Freight transportation is a hyper-competitive, low-margin, highly efficient, very fragmented marketplace,” Roop says. “[The shuttle] is a very ambitious undertaking.”
But at least he's got proof the thing works. His engineers and designers are currently building a beta vehicle and running the shuttle through a series of tests. If the system gets all the necessary OK’s from the state and surrounding communities, a pilot could be up and running in about 12 months, Roop says. Getting buy-in from the right state and local agencies, plus passing muster with nearby communities, should certainly take longer. Good thing you don't need to match the speed of sound to fix a problem.
