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January 11, 2006
Star network
The other day I ordered some stuff from a store in Grenoble. Perhaps I should've avoided the shipping charges and ridden over there on my bike, but it's inconvenient and shipping the box from the store out to Montbonnot (10 km) shouldn't be an expensive big deal.
Except the French postal Colissimo service appears to be organized as a star network, with the hub being far away in Lyon. That's where online tracking says the package is now.
Maybe something more peer-to-peer is just too hard for the post office to organize. The package is identified at pickup and assigned an ID, so it seems like they have the information in the system by the time they start physically taking anything anywhere.
I wonder if they put everything on a train. Seems like if they transported it by rail, at some point it would have to loop back across precisely the same tracks, as there wouldn't be a large number of stations. Maybe they truck it all the way over there so they can truck it back over here. It reminds me of those flights where you start out in the opposite direction so the airline can take you to the hub.
Maybe the package hasn't moved at all. Only the ID is stored in Lyon.
Posted by Mark at January 11, 2006 07:07 AM
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Comments
Maybe that's why all large cities have courrier services, because the post office just doesn't do peer-to-peer very well or very fast. And since most carriers go by bike to avoid traffic, you could've paid someone to ride their bike for you.
Posted by: Andy at January 12, 2006 09:22 PM
Or I could've ridden over there myself. It's probably less than 10 km from here. Were I not running at lunchtime, I'd have done that.
It seems like the post office would save a lot with peer-to-peer delivery, but perhaps the trouble comes when they have physically to drive over and pick up the package before they know whether it's going across town or around the world. I wonder.
Posted by: Mark at January 13, 2006 08:44 AM