Environment Transportation Delirious Pneu York: When the Subway Ran on Compressed Air By Lloyd Alter Design Editor University of Toronto Lloyd Alter is Design Editor for Treehugger and teaches Sustainable Design at Ryerson University in Toronto. our editorial process Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Lloyd Alter Updated October 11, 2018 Migrated Image Share Twitter Pinterest Email Transportation Automotive Active Aviation Public Transportation Jennifer Ouellette writes in io9 a post about pneumatic tube transport systems, strangely calling it A brief history of the pneumatic tube transport systems that never were and immediately showing images of a system in New York that actually was. TreeHugger has covered Alfred Ely Beach'es demonstration project of a pneumatic subway in America Used to Dominate High Speed Rail Transport. And while such systems are getting harder to find in banks and department stores where they were common for moving money and mail, they are making a comeback for other uses. Food tubes are being proposed as a low carbon method of distributing food; see FoodTubes: Totally Tubular Idea For Delivering Food Pneumatically Pneumatics are already being used to pick up garbage in Europe and on Roosevelt Island in New York. See a Great Short Film About the U.S.'s Only Residential Vacuum Garbage Collection and Should We Replace Garbage Trucks With Vacuum Tubes? More at io9 Follow me on Twitter! @lloydalter