Someone posted a link to these personal rapid transportation gizmos in an old post on this blog. Does anyone have any thoughts about these things? Are they great? Do they suck? Where are they being used?
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
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They're the only kind of mass transit that will provide equal or better convenience than cars. And it's convenience that is the primary market driver of increasing mass transit ridership.
Beyond convenience, PRT will be less expensive to build and operate, be available on demand around the clock, require less space, require a smaller footprint for stations and require less cost to build each station meaning more can be provided so more people will be able to walk to them, can operate quietly on above ground guideways, use less energy, cost less than auto transportation, and by using offline stations that omits requiring stopping at each intermediate station, get travelers to their destinations quicker. More advantages exist than these, too.
PRT has been continuously used since the '70's in West Virginia at WVU. Its system is considerably slower than what 21st century technologies will allow, but even Robert Goddard envisioned 90 years ago using similar systems to travel suboceanically and from North America to Europe in about an hour. If WVU's system sucked, it would have been discontinued decades ago. It continues running today, even with 20th century speeds.
PRTs also about to go into use in the U.K. and China is gearing up to deploy similar technology to deal with its daunting growth in city commuters. South Korea and several European countries are also developing systems.
Here's a presentation that was given last month in D.C.
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