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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!"
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.
Hogsback
So... you swipe a card, punch in a destination, and suddenly they have a very neat record of where you've gone using public transportation. Nice.
Aside from that, it's an interesting idea; you don't necessarily have the hassle of figuring out bus schedules. And you don't have to deal with a cab driver who barely speaks English and is quite willing to drive you around New York for two hours because you don't know that your destination is really only a fifteen-minute drive from the airport. So in that sense, it's nice.
I especially appreciated the photo that shows a bike will easily fit into these vehicles... good call! Heck, that means fitting a Segway in there would be pretty easy...
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
.. is that the people constructing these tracks don't have a large enough supply of "curved" sections of track, and always have plenty of "straight" sections of track. Thus, they keep having to go back to Toys R Us to buy more "curvy" tracks...
beats circut switched traffic any day. now i see why this is on /.
"i was saying gnu-rd"
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". :^)
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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...
Another good web site on the topic is Taxi2000.
Make sure you check out their FAQ.
The important topic that's always brought up is infrastructure. The beauty of the PRT design is that the infrastructure costs aren't all that appalling, since all the system needs to run is a narrow elevated track which can be built above existing roadways (so no right of way issues, etc). Yeah, it's more expensive than bus stations, but it's *way* cheaper than tunnels or elevated train track.
> Nothing beats the freedom of hopping into my car, when I want to and not waiting for public transportation, on their schedule
... yadda yadda. Yes, I'm pragmatic, but it bothers me when people are quick to shoot down new ideas because they're too damn lazy/comfortable with what they already have.
... and as it stands, once you get out on the road, it's You vs Them. But Them are your friends and neighbours once you get outta the car ..
Nothing beats having what I want, when I want, for how much I want it! Seriously, thats the kind of selfish approach that inhibits the adoption of technologies that would make the world better for people less fortunate than you; nevermind the evironment, noise pollution
With western technology and population desities being what they are, people have the ability to isolate themselves via technology. Cars are an excellent example. Think of how many people, in your city, go from one 4 block arena to the exact same 4 block area somewhere else. Think of how efficient it would be to co-ordinate and co-operate with them! But alas, you're already spoiled
"Old man yells at systemd"
This is a concept commonly refered to as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), a subset of Automated People Movers (APM) found at many airports. PRT has been around for a while and has somewhat fringe supporters (like me). Edward Anderson at the University of Minnesota has generated some of the most credible system designs and incorporated under Taxi2000. In fact, Raytheon developed a full test track of Anderson's concept outside of Boston; Bostonians can visit thier Marlborough, MA facility and see the future,!
The reason that PRT remains a fringe concept is related to economic challenges, not engineering ones. Although there are claims to the contrary, the general problem is that - like all public transit - PRT require a very high inital capital outlay. In dense urban areas, right-of-way costs are prohibitive. However, just as with information networks, public transit networks generate positive externalities: the larger the system, the more useful it is to everyone.
Furthermore there is little incentive to invest in expensive public works projects have prevented the testing of a fairly unproven technology. Public agencies would much rather invest in light rail systems that they have seen before than fancy driverless systems. Also, there is no conclusive proof that these decentralized systems can sustain the high corrider passenger/hour throughputs that make public transit so desirable for really dense urban areas.
Hopefully, projects like Cardiff will succeed and PRT will get recognition and legitimacy, but this is a technology that has been kicking around for a while and - as you can probably tell - is not insanely complex. As usual, economics and public policy get in the way of interesting engineering!
Urban Light Transport has more information on their web site, including some much higher-res images, FAQs and other info.
The most interesting (and not really mentioned) factor is that the automatic taxis don't travel on predetermined routes, they navigate their small network of paths to get to your destination.
The real problem is going to be pissed people on the way back from the pub throwing up in it.
If yer in a taxi they can hit you lots until you clear it up any pay for cleaning.
On a bus, well sort of the same.
Can you imagine getting aboard one of this and smelling a 2 hour old pool of vomit?
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
With the demise of netvan and the undesirability of purchasing a car solely to go to the grocery store I, for one, would find a mass transit system that would drop me off at my front curb very useful. Add to that the fact that getting a cab at my local food store is next to impossible (while finding one 6 blocks away is easy, go figure), and the physical challenges (read:impossibility) of carrying 15 bags of groceries on foot, and even the most casual, non-knee-jerk-cynical observer can see the usefulness of such a system.
... making traffic a little worse in the short run might be just the kind of incentive that would help speed adoption of such a system.
As for it being "out of the question" that such could track systems could be laid down in a major city, don't be absurd (not you, but another poster in this thread). Major cities are exactly where this kind of thing would be most useful. Like Europe, they could be integrated into the existing streetplans a la streetcars. If the traffic implications are too significant (possible during the installation and early use, likely the opposite once such a system were adopted widely) they could be built on an elevated track. Personally, I'd just take lanes away from old-style cars
Of course, entrenched interests such as automobile manufacturers and taxi drivers are likely to raise a stink and do everything they can to slow adoption of such a system, but that sort of thing should be resisted and fought, not pandered to. Alas, in an age where the government spends more time and money trying to preserve the business models of buggie whip manufacturers (c.f RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, SSSCA, Copyright extentions, etc.) rather than promoting the adoption of new technologies and the new capabilities they promise (c.f. universally accessible, virtually cost-free libraries, free sharing of information, etc.) the future we face, at least in the short term, is not an optomistic one at all.
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I believe there is a significant amount of research going on in a retrofitting of regular automobiles, where a computer system can keep track of all freeway traffic, and manuever them in the most efficient way in order to not cause clogging on the roads, like anticipating traffic merging from onramps, preventing unnecessary weaving, adjusting for breakdowns or accidents (accidents should be significantly lessened by this system, though), etc.
On the heaviest travelled highways, I see all too often people doing dumb things just for their personal perception of getting home faster, like madly weaving in between lanes, or passing traffic in the auxiliary (onramp/offramp merging) lanes, or semi-trucks gaining a whole 1MPH by passing another truck. Things like these make an already-congested road worse. This is the best shorter-term solution. We ain't going to see very many alternatives in the next 10-20 years, believe me. Instead of kidding ourselves with environmentally-friendly space-age pipe dreams, we need a system that is more affordable and fits in with our lifestyle.
No single mode of transportation is advantageous in every area of the world.
This is called Personal Rapid Transit, and the first PRT system in use was a "demonstration project" in Morgantown, West Virginia, funded by the U.S. Dept of Transportation. (Morgantown is the home of West Virginia University, and the system linked the WVU campus and downtown Morgantown.) It was built in the early 1970s, but I believe it is no longer operating. Subsequent to the development of the Morgantown project a similar system was developed at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport. All of the "ultramodern" features described for the system in Cardiff were used there: variable destinations, multiple route paths, standby cars to "flex" demand, etc.
The submitter of this article makes a slight mistake in his summary: PRT, including the Cardiff system, does not envision users being able to take vehicles off the tracks. There have been rail- and rubber tire-based PRT systems proposed, but even the rubber tire-based systems are designed for a dedicated, exclusive right of way. (Several mass transit systems, notably Toronto's, use rubber tires instead of rail.)
PRT suffers from a relatively simple problem: massive capital costs. I believe what finally killed the Morgantown project was a moment of clarity at the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA, the U.S. D.O.T. agency that oversaw the project). A consultant pointed out that while the PRT system had been fun, it would have been substantially cheaper to simply buy every student and staff member of WVU a new car every two years. (My stepfather was the smart-aleck consultant.)
The Cardiff project? Three words: Big Government Boondoggle. The fundamental problem of PRT is the fundamental problem of Light Rail and Monorails too: they are dedicated right-of-way solutions that run along an extremely expensive path. (Even if the cost of construction is trivial, the cost of land acquisition is enormous. If the cost of land acquisition is NOT enormous then there isn't sufficient population density to support a fixed right-of-way system.) It is dramatically cheaper to buy buses. It is dramatically more efficient to run buses. Buses can change routes instantly--so buses that "prowl" the city center Monday through Friday can run on suburban loop routes among shopping malls on Saturday and Sunday. And a bus-based transit system only requires a marginal additional cost for right-of-way (bus stop marking, signs, shelters, etc.).
But buses don't have the sex appeal of big transit projects, so people still throw money at thirty-year-old concepts and call them "ultramodern technology."
How 'bout if we haul out the big networking technology of the time, and proclaim ARCNET as "ultramodern" networking?