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.

but what they didn't mention...

[PorcelainLabrador]

.. 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...

ah packet based travel

[gnurd]

beats circut switched traffic any day. now i see why this is on /.

PRT = economic issues, not engineering ones

[robhranac]

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!

ULTra Web Site

[shut_up_man]

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.

Fail-safing

[Spamalamadingdong]

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". :^)

I don't suppose it occurred to your crew to have batteries on board the vehicles to take them to the next stop, or just use regenerative braking to power the vehicle systems while the de-powered part of the network came to a stop and shut down gracefully? (I really hate contrived disaster scenarios.)

Grocery Shopping a reason not to walk 2 blocks

[FreeUser]

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.

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 ... 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.

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.