Thread by @JRUrbaneNetwork

When I was taking the Shenzhen Metro at night, at Futian looking across the platform, I noticed some large boxes around the business class car of the opposing train. I stepped out to take a look and saw Shenzhen Metro is piloting delivering express parcels. A 🧵of what I saw.

Looking around the platform there are a lot of decals denoting a corridor for the freight (transported in dollies) to traverse the platform to the train from the elevator

The dollies are a frame with hooks that can hold two soft bags stacked on top of eachother filled with goods, probably electronics you ordered on Aliexpress from Huaqiangbei, the world's largest electronics market.

https://x.com/JRUrbaneNetwork/status/1772649520179925190

When I head to the concourse where the goods are coming down by elevator and I see the goods are delivered by autonomous minitrucks. The minitrucks unload the dollies, the dollies pass through the crash gate into the fare-paid areas of the station...

...and down to the platform using station elevators which in major Chinese metro stations usually had redundant elevators.

Outside the fare paid area I see a line of autonomous minitrucks waiting to be unloaded. The autonomous minitrucks cut things close! one almost hit me as it blasted pass me.

The autonomous minitrucks just drive (autonomously) around non-fare paid area of the station shuttling goods from a sorting facility in the adjacent underground mall to the aforementioned crash gate.

Following the autonomous minitrucks I found the sorting facility in the underground mall. Where the autonomous minitrucks parked up and awaited loading.

You can see how the autonomous minitrucks load and transport the dollies: they were picking them up, rotating then 90 degrees to laying them flat.

The autonomous minitrucks are dispatched back to the metro entrance crash gate, where the dollies are unloaded and brought down to Shenzhen Metro Line 11 and the cycle repeats.

And then the autonomous minitrucks go back to pick up more goods.

Looking on the internet I see that this is a pilot started in Aug 2023 between SF Express and Shenzhen Metro to shuttle packages and mail from their major Futian collection hub to their freight terminal at Shenzhen Bao'an International Airport via Shenzhen Metro Line 11.

2023 saw an explosion of pilot projects to get metro systems to deliver some time sensitive freight during off peak periods. With pilots being held in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuxi and Shenzhen Metros by China Post and SF Express.

We shall see how successful these turn out to be and what dedicated infra is required to scale this up. Regardless, thanks for reading this thread: Like, Share and Subscribe for more cutting edge transport news and experiences. Slap that bell for future notifications.