The internet of innovative-Swiss-underground-logistic-genius things.

When it comes to precision and accuracy, the Swiss traditionally lead the field. So their latest approach on handling the alpine federation’s general logistics is only true to their tradition: The Cargo Sous Terrain.

Switzerland is an alpine federal republic, its landscape mainly consists of hills and full on, snow-covered mountains. It also is an central transition hub for a lot of goods being moved in the European domestic market, as well as for goods being transported from middle and south Europe towards the east and vice versa. The volume of traffic on Swiss roads is believed to increase about 45% from 2010 to 2030.

The traffic on Swiss highways and citys is becoming an increasingly big issue and is believed to already negatively impacting Swiss business and travel.

Latest studies have found that even excessive investments in the country’s roads and highways would not be able to fix the already stretched infrastructure. But a country that is daring enough to put all kinds of tools into a single knive can not be stopped by such a minor obstacle.

An conglomerate of Swiss businesses, scientists and public institutions has developed a solution that leverages the Swiss’s ability (also passion) to dig tunnels and the vast and untapped possibilites of the Internet of Things: Cargo Sous Terrain is basically a tunnel system inhabited by self-driving vehicles that autonomously carry goods from A to B, at steady 30km/h and in groups connected to a train if fitting.

Additional space for cables of all sorts and a smaller system for faster moving, lesser carrying vessels is designed to complete the very ambitious project.

Hubs outside of citys and other strategic points allow goods to access or leave the robot-highway and to re-join the conventional traffic. Here they are supposed to continue their journey via eco-friendly forms of transportation like e-cars, -bikes or — perspectivally — drones. As a result, the Swiss highways could not only be relived of many of the loud, slow and polluting trucks, the whole logistics of the country is believed to massively benefit from this revolutionary approach.

The project is a herald of the impact the IoT is going to have. That conventional truck driving will fall victim to self-driving vehicles seems at least likely, but the change is going to be way more fundamental (literally). It’s not the way the vehicles are steered, it’s not how the vehicles function, it’s the whole concept of transportation that is going to change. Change around the promise of interconnected, learning and increasingly autonomous mechanisms.

IoT changes everything, because it changes what can be done and therefore renders every solution based on a pre IoT world as flawed and partial.

The ambitious initiative plans to finish the first 70 kilometres of smart cargo tunnels by 2030. They claim to have proven their concept technically and economically feasible. What they are missing is full funding of the estimated 3,5 Bio. Franken (about 3,5 Bio. Euro), to only mention the highest hurdle.

So besides being the harbinger of an all effecting change, the Cargo Sous Terrain may never see the light of day.