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Even if it works. Well, it reduces driver boredom and allows them to do something else. That's it. It might in the long distant future also reduce accident rates. However it doesn't solve any of the other problems associated with car usage; expense, pollution and congestion.

You're going to be spending just as much money on the vehicle, using just as much energy, producing just as much pollution and spending just as much time stuck in traffic.

While automated driving is cool and interesting, it's not revolutionary, it doesn't solve any of the big problems caused by car usage we have today. It's worth noting that it's not possible for any of the existing public transport technologies to solve the problems caused by car usage either.

http://www.vectusprt.com/
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
http://www.skywebexpress.com/
http://www.mist-er.com/index-en.htm

Hm, sounds a bit like this.

This PDF document has an interesting graph on the last page titled "Efficiency of Travel Mode" that shows the usefulness of travel modes (PRT, auto, foot) over varying distances. It wouldn't be hard to imaging how a 747 would look on the graph.

In your sporting event example, light rail and buses may work well if you assume that the riders want to go to the same destination, or if you just want to get people away from the stadium. If your goal is to actually get the people to their destination, the most convenient way would have the fewest transfers and least amount of waiting. A PRT system could provide more convenient transport here than the bus or light rail system.

This page directly addresses the question of how a PRT system could handle crowds. Keep in mind that each PRT vehicle would take the riders directly to their destination station, with no stops.

"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.

http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
http://www.skywebexpress.com/

http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans/prtquick .htm

etc.

Would mean that you don't have to drive ever again:

http://www.skywebexpress.com/
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/

It's called Personal Rapid Transit.

http://www.skywebexpress.com/

I'm not sure it will ever take off, but the idea has so many possibilities and has been under research since the 70's.

I guess the problem is, once you have the car(~$400/month payment) and insurance(~$100), any amount you drive is about 12 cents a mile(25mpg car,$2 gallon,$1 maintenance), discounting your time. If you drive a 30mpg car and do your own maintenance, it might cost you 8 cents a mile.

So once you make the decision that you need the car, your monthly cost is $500/month + .12/mile. Now, when I last looked at bus rates, it was $1.25 for a one-way trip. So unless I was going more than 10 miles(15 for the efficient car), it's cheaper for me to drive. Add in "faster" and "more convenient" and I'm going to drive alot. I'll take a cab when flying (Airports not far, and charges for parking).

But then, that's just my situation. If you sit down and figure it out, you can find your own situation. If you live in a primitive arcology, you may be able to do just about everything via elevators, and subway system.

If they put the PRT system into practice, it could deliver stuff right to your building. Hire a building delivery guy to move the stuff right to your location.

Of course, this site brings up some potential problems with PRT (that I don't see as being any different from other mass transit or monorail). And I see the stations being built inside buildings. Not over the street.

Perhaps (more) dedicated bus lanes...

Or better yet, Skyweb express!

"A) I believe a camera would be installed in the cars, but I don't know all that much more about that part."

The design will allow for a camera, but it is not manditory. It is up to the city buying the system. They leave it up to the city because of the privacy issues involved. As for vomit and otherwise dirty cars, the user will have the option to press a button and send the car to a cleaning station.

More on vandalism:
http://skywebexpress.com/1417_vandalism.shtml

Brian

Has anybody watched the cheesy promotional video on the web site? Among the many problems, the theme to "Gone With The Wind" is questionable background music for an elevated transportation system. Maybe they are trying to sell to Atlanta. I won't even start on the sucky website design.

"there isn't much way to know as of yet whether these will turn out to be real problems or not, since no systems have been built yet"

Yeah, no systems have been built, but they do have a prototype in Minneapolis! I've taken a ride in it, it's really kind of cool.

http://skywebexpress.com/news/news-2003-04-10-pl.s html

P.S. I see that you're a U of M student. The system was actually developed at the University of Minnesota by Dr. Ed Anderson. The prototype is about 20min North of the Twin Cities campus in Fridley. If you want to try it out, stop by their next open house.

Brian

Go see http://www.skywebexpress.com/news/news-openhouse.s html
Coming this December 8th, you can go for a ride on it.

Of course though, being in the showroom; I imagine it's a pretty short hunk of track.

The answer is on their site.
2. What happens if a SkyWeb Express vehicle stops on an elevated guideway between stations?

Brian Maddy

A few issues: If the stations are a mile apart, then that means that the maximum distance to a station is 1/2 mile, not 2 miles. The average distance would be even lower than that. While i'm a little skeptical of their ability to do this in any major city, that would be sufficient to replace taxis for all but the most urgent applications.
I agree that buses are more economical to install, but look at their quoted operating costs. After a while they'll pay for themselves relative to buses.

Naa...that would be thinking too much.

Regardless of when Priya Jain found out about it this is really old news. I heard about this system years ago. Check SkyWeb's history page to see how old this proposal really is.

http://www.skywebexpress.com/ and

http://www.skytran.net/

I guess you could consider the elevated guideway a rail. I was really thinking more trains when I wrote that. Sorry, I should have said that.

I'd have to say that PRT is vastly different from rail systems in use today though. Existing rail systems all have huge cars and inline stops, wheras PRT uses very small cars and all the stops are offline. Those are the key elements to it. A Train is just too wasteful when only a handful of people are on it, so they're only efficient in areas of very dense population. For example, here in Minneapolis we have huge subsidies for our new light rail, but PRT could operate with little or no subsidies.

I know that the SkywebExpress people aren't planning on directly competing with busses/subways. They really view their system as complimenting them.
Can SkyWeb Express be complementary to other transit systems?

I can understand why people balk at public transportation -- there are a lot of problems with it. It's slow and it just doesn't scale; in "good" public transit places, it's only good because traffic and parking has crippled car use.

PRT can scale better than typical public transit, when you consider both the density of service, and total trip time. Hopefully a more technical-minded crowd can get over the naive idea that big trains can necessarily carry more people. If you just consider a track with one car per second (1 person per car) -- a very conservative density -- vs. a traditional train with five minute headways, the traditional train doesn't look so hot. Especially when you consider the effort in supporting a 40 ton car (that's just one traditional train car) vs. a 1 ton PRT car (and hopefully they could get that weight down considerably as technology improves); the PRT tracks should be way cheaper, and ultimately cheaper than roads. They couldn't actually replace roads, but they could make expansion unnecessary, or even make contraction of roads possible (e.g., removing lanes), and reduce the load on roads so they don't deteriorate as quickly.

PRT is meant to work with urban areas the way they are, not just the way we wish them to be. And the technology itself doesn't require any breakthroughs, even taking into account safety issues.

Anyway, I really hope something comes of it. Some links: SkyWeb, the PRT company that's furthest along; Citizens for PRT; Advanced Transit PRT Page for a bunch of links and academic studies about PRT.

public mass transit != rail

There are definately better options out there. The best one I have seen is Personal Rapid Transit (PRT).

http://skywebexpress.com/

What we need is something a bit more flexible.

Yeah, this coule be a little off topic, but it really does seem like the obvious solution to the mass transit problem to me. It was incredibly quiet when I took a ride in the prototype. I've never heard a MagLev though.

SkyWeb Express Personal Rapid Transit:
http://skywebexpress.com/

SkyWeb!

$14 million per mile for a toy train.
Instead they should have tried PRT, small vehicles which go directly to your destination stations and cost maybe $11 million. Sure, it uses wheels. But the track is only a 2-foot girder on poles, which is somewhat easier to build than "rail" is.