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Domain: personalrapidtransit.com

Stories and comments across the archive that link to personalrapidtransit.com.

Comments · 7

  1. There is no good fix for the sprawl. by Colin+Smith · · Score: 4, Interesting · on US Gasoline Prices Spur Telework

    I disagree:

    http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/

  2. Re:Ehm. no it isn't by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1 · on Another Step Towards the Driverless Car

    You run into the problem, though, of commuter patterns, as you have a large group of people moving from the 'burbs to the city in the morning, and then all moving back in the afternoon. You just need a cache of taxis at the burb/city end large enough to keep the service time down to within acceptable limits, say a 120 second wait. Bearing in mind that the taxis re-circulate once dropping off their passengers the cache doesn't have to be anything like as large as you might think.

    And it can be done today without requiring A.I. ...
    http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/prtquick. htm
    http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
    http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/

    The performance of a PRT system, like roads, is determined by how quickly people get on/off the road/vehicles rather than the distance between the vehicles or their speed. i.e. the number of bays in a station. Again, it's the interfaces which matter, not the roads/guideways etc.
  3. Hub & spoke vs switched, the key is computer t by Colin+Smith · · Score: 2, Insightful · on Charter Flight Websites / Services?

    We obviously have a hub & spoke system at the moment, the economic change to switched requires the hub and spoke system to become more expensive or switched transport to become less expensive. Hub & spoke is very expensive as it is, airports are expensive and large jets are also expensive. For that matter, trains are expensive, stations are expensive and rail lines are also very expensive. The additional security concerns will add to those costs.

    Switched transport though has to become cheaper. At the moment it's limited primarily by the cost of the vehicle and cost of pilot/driver. The solution is to get rid of the pilot/driver entirely and to mass produce the vehicle to reduce the per unit cost. Frankly this means something like a fully automated Moller aircar or CarterCopter for air transport and Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) for ground based transport.

  4. Re:And yet only about 10% use public transport by Osty · · Score: 1 · on VW Raises the Bar for Self-Driving Vehicles

    That is exactly what PRT is designed to do. It's not an unrealistic expectation at all. Infact it's the cheapest, most efficient form of public transport. http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/

    You know, as soon a that website did its shitty, "I'm going to resize your browser without your permission so that it looks like it's maximized but it's really not," thing, I gave up caring. PRT may be the world's transportation savior, but I'm never going to know because I'll never go back to that website. Way to go, shithead web designers!

  5. Re:And yet only about 10% use public transport by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1 · on VW Raises the Bar for Self-Driving Vehicles
    "Until I can walk outside of my house and immediately jump on a train or bus that will take me exactly where I want to go without any lengthy stops or detours in between, I will not use public transportation. Since that's a completely unrealistic expectation of public transporation,"


    That is exactly what PRT is designed to do. It's not an unrealistic expectation at all. Infact it's the cheapest, most efficient form of public transport.

    http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/

  6. Um, and so they should. The automobile is obsolete by Colin+Smith · · Score: 4, Interesting · on Bob Metcalfe on Open Source, IPv6, IETF

    "I guess someone should tell automakers that they should reinvent a mode of transportation from scratch."

    Perhaps transport engineers rather than automakers. The automakers have a huge investment in the status quo. You don't need 4 wheels an engine, brakes, throttle or even a driver.

    Transport engineers have already designed and built transport systems which don't have any of the above. Starting from scratch in the 1950s they devised a transport system which optimises the mathematics of getting from A -> B. Yes there is mathematics which describe the performance of transport.

    It turns out that this is about as close to optimal as you're going to get with current technologies. Computer controlled, linear induction motors, a few rollers rather than wheels and only 16 moving parts. Non stop from A->B, no congestion, no traffic lights, no changing routes, no waiting on schedules.

    It's been independantly re-invented a few times over the last few decades but we've now got the computer technology to actually do it.

  7. Actually, packetized transit will be the future by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1 · on New Way to Make Hydrogen

    In terms of the mathematics of getting from A->B, it's the optimum solution. Highest performance for lowest cost, lowest energy consumption.

    http://www.personalrapidtransit.com/

    We'll see it tested in airports, university campuses, small towns at first in various incompatible guises over the next couple of decades. It'll end up everywhere.