Somewhere as densely populated as NY is surely best served by those rubbish bins that empty into a trash vacuum tunnel.
Massive upfront cost (infrastructure and NY seems to be a bit fraught) and also likely expensive to run, but with high population density it’s got to be better.
However this would then have a fleet of snow trucks that weren’t used 99% of the time, as the rubbish was mostly sorted.
"[A] bit fraught" is an understatement. Any excavation under the right of way in New York immediately runs into undocumented tunnels, steam conduits, sewers, and water pipelines from the past 400 years of development.
They're trying to map these things out but it will probably take more than a decade. Until that happens you can't even begin to budget for a new city-wide underground infrastructure project. Any project has to be point to point and focused.
Between the subways, underground rail lines, etc, you’d probably have to put them 100ft underground to get clearance. That’s 100ft through solid rock. Great for building skyscrapers, not fun for digging.
Ironically one of the largest vacuum trays system in the world IS in NYC… but it serves Roosevelt Island, not the “mainland”
Massive upfront cost (infrastructure and NY seems to be a bit fraught) and also likely expensive to run, but with high population density it’s got to be better.
However this would then have a fleet of snow trucks that weren’t used 99% of the time, as the rubbish was mostly sorted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automated_vacuum_collection