> I was watching a Disney+ documentary on the making of Disney World and was impressed that all the garage cans use pneumatic tubes to empty in a central dump not visible to guests. Is such a solution not possible at NYC scale?
There is one portion of Manhattan where that is done, yes.
That would be cost-prohibitive in most of the city due to the amount of digging required, and the expense of digging in NYC (an old city which has extensive underground piping and infrastructure that was laid before these things were regularly documented, so there's no way to know which water/electricity/etc lines are in an area before you actually dig there).
There is one portion of Manhattan where that is done, yes.
That would be cost-prohibitive in most of the city due to the amount of digging required, and the expense of digging in NYC (an old city which has extensive underground piping and infrastructure that was laid before these things were regularly documented, so there's no way to know which water/electricity/etc lines are in an area before you actually dig there).