When businessman and engineer Roger Miles pitched his idea for an underground delivery system to the UK government in 2003, he was told that it “doesn’t invest in crackpot ideas”.
The transport department felt that his plan to build a network of tunnels to transport parcels — an idea developed by the Victorians in London — was not an economically viable alternative to the trains and trucks that typically handle deliveries, according to Mr Miles.
But by 2050, the UN predicts that 68 per cent of the world’s population will live in urban areas. Such demographic changes will increase the need to figure out how to deliver goods to consumers in these congested, sprawling megacities efficiently and without harming the environment.
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