travel by tube "a thing"

The Hyperloop continues to make news and continues to be linked to pneumatic tubes. See the latest in this article in Automobile, which calls the Hyperloop a "series of powerful pneumatic tubes", or the human equivalent of the plastic tubes in bank drive-thrus.

Image from Kevin Krejci's Flickr, used under the Creative Commons lisence.

the last of the drive-thru banking tubes?

The Drive-Thru has always fascinated me. How the act of getting out of your car becomes too much work. Having grown up in Australia, I mostly know drive-thrus from fast-food outlets (how can I forget the head-sets, beeping fryers and frantic burger orders of my high-school KFC job!). In the US however, drive-thrus are used for all manner of services: mail, coffee, pharmacies, and banks.

Until recently, many drive-thru banks used pneumatic tubes. When I read comments to online articles on pneumatic tubes, there are invariably a string of anecdotes and memories of bank drive-thru pneumatic tubes. According to a New Jersey website, we might be seeing the last of these banking tubes however. Their numbers are dwindling. The down-sizing is taking place in the context of down-sizing of banks more generally, as banking cultures change.

Not everyone likes to do their banking online or at an ATM however. For some, there is a reassurance in the personal transaction. And for others, there is just the fun of sending money into a vacuum.