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Mass Transit Meets The Incredibles
Chuckstar writes "Salon.com has an article about SkyWeb Express, a futuristic-looking mass transit system similar to the monorail in the evil villain's secret lair in The Incredibles. What is unique about this system is that individual 3-passenger cars travel independently between stations, which are located on side-tracks so cars only need to stop at the final destination. Apparently, the system is relatively cheap to install, cost efficient per passenger mile, and much more flexible than traditional mass transit. The New York Post covered the topic last month."
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
For those of us who don't have a premium subscription and don't want to watch an ad:
Car ports
How those eerily beautiful bubble cars in "The Incredibles" may well appear in our not-too-distant future.
By Priya Jain
Nov. 19, 2004 | In "The Incredibles," the eponymous superhero family spends much of the movie trying to either escape or infiltrate the villain's high-tech island lair. Among the creepy sci-fi elements -- parrots with camera eyes, a destructive robot that can strategize -- is the beautifully eerie monorail that silently glides around the volcano, transporting the villain's henchmen in small round cars. The heroes occasionally hitch a ride on one of these moving pods while battling the forces of evil.
In real life, we may not have superheroes, but soon we will have those little monorail cars, zipping commuters and shoppers (and maybe an occasional henchman) from point A to point B. They're part of a system called Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT, which is poised to replace the more expensive, less environmentally friendly and frequently less convenient mass transit systems of old.
What really makes PRT different from mass transit is that it combines the convenience and luxury of a taxi with the efficiency of subway and bus travel: Rather than packing into a large carriage with a hundred smelly strangers, with PRT you get a private car. Instead of stopping at every station on the line, you zip straight to your final destination. And the visual impact -- replacing the bulky steel trains and buses with sleek bubbles that look like mid-century creations from the designer Arne Jacobsen -- appeals to any kid who dreamt of being a Jetson, or now, an Incredible.
Leading the way in the PRT revolution is the Minnesota-based Taxi 2000 Corporation, founded in 1983 by Dr. J. Edward Anderson, a former NASA engineer who turned his attention to transit in 1968. After studying the problems with conventional mass transit, he developed SkyWeb Express, which is poised to be the first commercial PRT system in the world.
Anderson claims SkyWeb Express beats mass transit in every way: It's greener, more convenient, safer and visually more acceptable, since the cars and rail are streamlined and small (observe this comparison between the New York subway and a SkyWeb system). The cars, unlike the round pods in "The Incredibles," are egg-shaped, and allow enough room for three to four people plus their shopping bags, luggage and wheelchair or bicycle. They run on synthetic rubber tires, which reduce noise pollution, along a monorail guideway that's 3 feet wide by 3 feet deep. And because the system is powered by 600-volt DC electricity, it produces no emissions.
As Taxi 2000 imagines the scenario, commuters would enter the station, purchase a fare card and head to the platform -- just as one does now with most rail systems. But instead of waiting for a train to come by, passengers would hop into one of the empty cars that are idling in the station, swipe their card and enter a destination code. Because stations are positioned "offline" -- that is, the rail runs next to the station, not through it -- cars can pull into stops without slowing down traffic.
SkyWeb Express may also be the answer to the seemingly impossible quandary that every environmental advocate faces: how to make green technologies cost-effective. Taxi 2000 estimates that installation of SkyWeb Express would cost $10 million per mile -- nearly five times less than the cost of light rail and 10 times less than heavy rail. And operating costs at 38 cents per passenger mile (compared to $3.43 for heavy rail and $1.42 for light rail) mean that SkyWeb Express could operate on a break-even basis -- and therefore without the government subsidies that mass transit, which operates at a loss, relies on. The guideway also weighs less and is easier to assemble than light or heavy rail, and in fact the guideway can be installed by an ordinary fork-lift truck, only minimally disrupting regular traffic and there
You never ride with strangers on PRT -- you only ride with people you are traveling with. Both stations and cars would be equiped with panic buttons (among other security devices), so no one can force you to ride with them (or anything else).
Naa...that would be thinking too much.
yeah.. you've got the right idea. This is from teh skywebexpress website: Station Capacity (Stations can be sized from one to about 15 berths) 450 Vehicles per hour for a 3 berth station 750 Vehicles per hour for a 6 berth station 950 Vehicles per hour for a 9 berth station 1250 Vehicles per hour for a 12 berth station 1500 Vehicles per hour for a 15 berth station All assume a normal time distribution for passenger boarding and deboarding in the stations http://www.skywebexpress.com/150f_capacity.shtml
WVU PRT
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
"No rear-end or merging collisions, because the vehicles are not operating independently. All are communicating with a central computer system that keeps tabs on traffic throughout the network. In principal it works like this: Cars continuously report their positions (every 40 milliseconds in Taxi 2000), and the central computer system tracks their location; the two sets of data are continuously compared. If a vehicle does something it's not supposed to do (such as follow too close, stop unexpectedly, a mechanical breakdown, or even if the vehicle's reporting signal is interrupted), the central system will send commands to fix or avoid problems-- "deccelerate for 3 seconds", for example. This system is always in operation, ensuring safe distances between vehicles whether on straightaways or at junctions."
With regard to getting out of a stopped car,
"There are over 70 elevated automated transit systems operating in the world today that prove that a vehicle stopping when not intended is a very rare event. If a vehicle does stop between stations, Central Control will talk with the passengers through an intercom system and guide the rescue operation. The vehicle behind will soft engage and push the disabled vehicle to the nearest station. In the very unlikely event that the vehicle can't be moved, a rescue team will come with a ladder and help the passengers out of the vehicle."
http://www.skywebexpress.com/1414_between_stations .shtml
Curbita = Curitiba, right?
I don't have a sig.
From their frontpage: "an area-wide feeder to light rail or buses". In big cities this would collect people to subway/light rail/bus/whatever systems, then ship them in bulk to their destination and use another SkyWebExpress system to deliver them more precisely to their target. If ticket systems are integrated and wait times are minimized, this can work in cities of arbitrary size.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
What? I was there this summer and it was still running. It was my favorite ride. Just sit back and relax. You actually get goin' pretty fast. As we came around one time we told the guy we were just gonna take another trip. There's plenty of space and little crowd draw.
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
Simulations seem to show that's it's not too bad. iTS is a neat graphical simulation program for PRT, and this simpler simulation shows what happens with a backup at a single station (that one also has a movie of the simulation, though I believe both are fairly easy to install).
The other problem with big-city transit is that repairs and upgrades are hard, because there's these incredibly essential lines, and you can't just take them down. Instead you have people working at night and putting everything in place for the morning, or shuttles to deal with missing service, or whatnot. With PRT there's builtin redundancy, so individual lines could be taken off without impacting the entire network.
That said, PRT should work fine alongside other transit options, potentially as a feeder to get people the last mile or two to their actual destination.
A system similar to this is in operation at WVU: Pictures and story This is a good system, but it's slow, and showing it's age. But as a prior student at WVU I can say it works much nicer than a bus or other option.
Wallace Shawn (aka Vizzini) played Mr. Incredible's boss in "The Incredibles." Hence the connection with the post's mention of the movie.
I actually went to a presentation put on by IEEE in which the chief inventor guy for the project did a big talk and spiel on this exact system. The major problem with buses is that, from a practical perspective, they're slower than my ass getting out of bed in the morning. Sure they may be ABLE to travel at 55 mph, but they never DO. If, as you suggested, they stop at every single block, then their average speed slows to almost zero.
On the practical side, people only want to ride transportation that's convenient and relatively fast. While the buses ARE relatively convenient, they're definitely NOT fast, especially for traveling any decent length.
What the skyweb does is about halfway between bus, taxi, and subway/monorail. It has stations and set track routes, like monorails and subways, but unlike them the skyweb requires only the footprint of a telephone-pole size support to put up (so no massive "rail corridors that need to be cleared), the cost of putting the tracks and stations up is a small fraction of the cost for a monorail/subway, and each individual trip is a point to point trip with no stops in the middle. This makes it:
a) Much cheaper and easier to install/build than subways
b) Fast like a taxi without the traffic congestion and smoking, swearing drivers
c) Also quick to put up, since the track is very simple and small
The other big advantage of this system is that all of the cars are controlled by a central traffic computer. This keeps them all at the ideal speed and spacing to avoid traffic jams, accidents, and other things that make regular roadways so frequently clogged.
I hope I've been clear and understandable. The system is pretty amazing from what I saw, I really hope they're able to get it off the ground (haha) soon!
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
I can answer at least some of these questions. I went to a big IEEE presentation about half a year ago where the chief engineer from this company did a big spiel on the system.
:)
A) I believe a camera would be installed in the cars, but I don't know all that much more about that part.
B) Homeless people wouldn't live there - you have to pay to get IN to the pod, then it travels to the destination you tell it, then it opens at the station to let you out and won't go anywhere until you leave. Now you could just set the pod to do a long distance but from what I understand the fare system would be distance-based. So homeless people would doubtfully have the money necessary to use one for any length of time.
C) The likelihood of any one car breaking down between stations is extremely slim. The drivetrain is a dual induction motor and I believe it also has an onboard battery pack in case power to the track gets cut. If one motor goes out the other one takes over. If both motors go out or something horrible like that, the central computer knows where it is and instructs the car behind it to enter "push mode" and push the car to the next available station so the occupants can get out and receive a new pod.
As far as actual evacuation from the pod mid-trip, I honestly don't know. That wasn't something we really covered at the presentation, it was more about the technology and logistics of the system as a whole.
Hope I made some version of sense
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
From the article:
;)
> Some of the original computerized system does
> work and is used by United Airlines to move
> passenger luggage from DIA's terminal to the B
> concourse.
United Airlines has a Denver hub, so it's actually a significant amount of traffic. What they're scrapping is the system that connected with the other airlines. I've seen video of the working section in operation. They had to make quite a lot of changes. The working system is actually quite fast and efficient - the bags fly by at 19 mph, and they have almost zero bag damage rate (unlike before), and a very low misrouting rate. The project is just ridiculously over-budget and over-schedule, and had its scope cut
Ironically, it'd be a lot easier to make nowadays; for example, one of their biggest problems was baggage identification. They use tags read by lasers as the bag passed that would get obscured, blocked, or all sorts of things. Nowadays, they can just use RFID.
The *special* hell.
The Simpsons. When Homer goes to space, he manages to set free some ants used in an experiment (in the most humorous way possible, but you'll just have to watch the episode).
Meanwhile, Kent Brockman is switching over to "Live Footage" of the space shuttle as an ant floats past the camera, looking incredibly huge. Kent believes that the shuttle has been taken over by "Giant Alien Ants", to which he sucks up with the infamous line: "I for one would like to welcome our alien ant overlords"
I've probably got a lot of that wrong, but the gist of it is corrent.
Retrofitting a city with bus-only roads is a lot easier and cheaper than retrofitting a city with a subway or elevated train. In addition, the reduced car lanes will encourage people not to drive and to take mass transit.
In NYC, the proposed 2nd ave subway line has been debated and stalled for 30 years. It is estimated to cost billions and not be complete for another 20 years. A so-called "Superbus" would greatly reduce congestion on the Lexington Ave line and speed up commutes for those on the far east side.
Also, a bus-only road can be used for emergency vehicles, who would not have to stop for lights. I believe the trolley lanes in Downtown Toronto are like this.
A superbus would slow down, stop, load, and unload, but as demonstrated by an effecient subway system, that entire process can be achieved in about a minute. In Japan they hire people to stuff people into crowded cars to accelerate this process!
If you read the site you'd know that they intend to have cameras in all vehicles with an IR sensor to determine when the pod is occupied so the monitors know when to watch them. There will also be a button to notify the monitors when you find a car which has been vandalized, and you can veto a vehicle which it's happened to. If it breaks down between stations then another vehicle can push it to the next station, but they have redundant motors in them so they are unlikely to fail. If they do fail, you can get people down from the cars via a ladder or a high-lift. Read the website! Your comment would be more interesting (it certainly doesn't deserve score 5) if the answer to every question you ask wasn't on their webpage.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"