Freight pipelines to solve traffic congestion in KL?

While Amazon and Google are experimenting with drones, a British company is experimenting with delivery through pipelines in the UK. The logic of Roger Miles from Mole Solutions (UK): “If clean water and fuel can be transported via pipelines, why not goods”.

As an alternative to the conventional road, rail, air and water transport, freight pipelines are highly reliable, economic (after water the cheapest mode of transport), safe, secure, and environmentally friendly way to carry goods quickly and on time. Furthermore underground transportation pipelines are unaffected by aboveground traffic congestion and weather conditions. Freight pipelines are especially attractive to facilitate high volume cargo flows from fixed origins to fixed destinations that are affected by congestion.

How do freight pipelines work?

A freight pipeline is a pipeline of 2 – 2.5 meters in diameter transporting cargo capsules on steel wheels driving on a rail track. These capsules are electric powered and unmanned. The capsule can carry pallets/load carriers with unitised cargo, liquid/gas containers or bulk materials. These capsules travel at a speed of around 50 km/hour. These capsules can also be temperature controlled to facilitate the logistics of flowers, fish, meat, chocolates, medicines, etc. A second possibility is that capsules are propelled by a fluid moving through a pipeline instead of rail. When the fluid is air or another gas, the technology is called pneumatic capsule pipeline, and, when water or another liquid is used, it is termed hydraulic capsule pipeline. The first practical implementations of freight pipelines were in post and mail, whereas today’s concepts, prototypes and testing are being developed for palletised freight & consumer goods (Germany, Italy, UK), flowers (the Netherlands) and food (UK). Freight pipelines can best be developed along existing rail or road infrastructure to avoid issues with land acquisition.

Possible applications?

In Malaysia freight pipelines could be used for example to link KLIA with Kuala Lumpur as well as the logistics hub Shah Alam with the centre of Kuala Lumpur. This infrastructure could act as a key building block in a total city distribution concept in order to facilitate a more sustainable, efficient and more reliable city logistics in Malaysia’s largest metropolis.  In Kuala Lumpur this pipeline could ‘end’ in a city logistics distribution centre, from where with electric vans and bio diesel trucks goods can be delivered and collected.

What is the urgency?

Innovative logistics concepts will be crucial for Kuala Lumpur’s city logistics in the coming 15 years in order to avoid a so-called traffic infarct, which Jakarta is experiencing today. Similar to Kuala Lumpur, Jakarta has a large population and fast growing rate of urbanisation combined with a fast growth of shopping malls and businesses located in its capital city. These factors resulted in massive traffic jams in Jakarta, leading to poor truck utilisation. According to logistics companies based in Jakarta a truck can do less than one trip per day on average. This has resulted in high logistics costs, a highly unreliable logistics system, affecting businesses, consumers and foreign investment. 

As there is a limitation to how many more roads you can build in Kuala Lumpur, freight pipelines could be a solution to be explored to address the fast increasing traffic and traffic congestion in one of Asia’s leading metropolis.