Domination

This project could start to deliver results in a three year time-frame – building up services in the new Eco-towns as they grow. Realistically, five years is more likely for the first really stable system. How quickly it then rolls out around the country and the globe depends very much on the success of the early implementations but with the best will in the world, it will take perhaps twenty years for the service to become the norm in somewhere like the UK. It will gradually become the norm in inner cities, then in the suburbs, and rural communities.

The initial deployments of Localnet will inevitably be subsets of the services and vision set out in this volume. It will take many years for them to flesh out fully. In that time, a range of new technologies, opportunities and challenges will arise. The system will have to evolve to suit the changing environment of which it is becoming an increasingly important part.

The suggestions below are beyond the current horizon and I’m not arguing that these are viable yet – but in time they will come. Things to come make the initial vision look somewhat mundane and lacklustre but we need to deliver on the initial vision first.

The next step change in the system is likely to be moving from same day to same hour delivery. It’s possible now; it would just take a lot of upfront investment in tunnels and automated box moving equipment.

No-one ever sees the trash cans being emptied in Disneyland. This is because they sit on top of a purpose built underground infrastructure of miles and miles of service tunnels. Similarly, under the streets of London, alongside the train tunnels are smaller goods tunnels – one of which houses a mail system sending small carriages of post bags silently and efficiently beneath our feet. Initially in large cities but then gradually spreading out to lower and lower density hubs and neighbourhoods we should see Localnet tunnels being built. Any large scale redevelopment should be considering these as schemes.

Such tunnels with fully automated routing all the way from supplier business to residential customer would revolutionise eating and home cooking. Imagine being able to order from any restaurant within a couple of miles and have a tray appear in your “dumb waiter” hatch in the same time it would take for it to arrive if you were sitting at the restaurant.

Managing acceleration, deceleration and cornering at high speeds will be an interesting exercise for the control engineers as without care on this front, any meal ordered from the opposite side of town will either arrive cold or in a lump up one corner of the box!

Knowing you could obtain almost any item that is within a few miles of you in less than ten minutes would change the way we shop, the way we cook and the way we relax. Finished your novel? Pop it in the box, put the kettle on and you’ll have a replacement before you’ve finished your coffee.