New Thoughts in Public Transportation

Matthew Shaylor writes "The BBC has the following article about an ultramodern public transport system to be tested in Cardif. Unlike conventional public transport, this consists of small cars that running on tracks can automatically take themselves to the correct destination. This allows there to be a mesh of tracks and stations thoughout a city, as opposed to traditional transport which tends to run along corridor routes to a city center. An interesting paper is available. Future versions may have dual control to allow people to drive the cars from the nearest station off the track to their homes. A true replacement for the car!"

Comments

Bikes

[hogsback]

I'm v.pleased to see from the photo that they will allow bikes to be taken aboard.

The combination of bike and public transport is perfect for me and many others.

Sounds familiar...

[Jon Abbott]

Back in my freshman year in college, I proposed and worked on a very similar transportation system, called HSTS (High Speed Transit System). Other engineering students collaborated with it as well. We even had a student code a Java applet that simulated the whole thing. The biggest problem we found was what would happen if the cars were going really fast, and the power suddenly went off... We used the term "Mass Death". :^)

Tailor made for Pittsburgh Pa

[Mr. Fred Smoothie]

There has been so much talk here about pie-in-the-sky stuff like High Speed Mag-lev for years, while all actual public funding has gone into taxpayer-funded construction of multiple new stadiums and commissioning multipe, potentially fraudulent or mismanaged property tax reassesments -- while absolutely nothing concrete has been done to fix the transportation problems in what's probably the home of the WORST transportation infrastructure in the country. Many smart people have pointed out the huge negative impact the transportation infrastructure has on the potential growth of Western PA's economy.

Instead of installing some corrider-constrained, incredibly expensive Mag-Lev system of dubious value which does nothing to address the nightmare of getting from neighborhood to neighborhood in this tangle of hills, gullies and twisty streets they call a City, they could use existing arterials (supplimented perhaps with a couple of new ones) to *greatly* expand the reach of public transportion and make it practical to ditch the now-mandatory two-car-per-family lifestyle.

Phew, feels good to get that off my chest...