Dense urban cities need not only mass, but also rapid transportation options to get people from their beloved car onto “public” transit systems. Buses do not cut it in many cases as they are often crowded, too hot or too cold, stop frequently and are often far slower than a car. The only advantage they offer a car user is price, and that is not good enough for many. Time is money, and if your time is valuable people opt out of public transit, especially if not rapid.
Most cities though are cash constrained. As such, to build a fast system one has basically three options:
- take away an existing lane for a dedicated bus lane
- go underground
- go above ground
The latter option is not so common, with Vancouver’s Skytrain system, Seattle’s monorail or Wuppertal’s Suspension Railway (Schwebebahn) being an exception rather than the norm.
But here is a new, very fast, green, quiet and very cost-effective idea, built 
right now on test tracks in Israel.
Skytran uses pods that can be programmed to go to the destination without stopping – as such it eliminates the frustrating 28 stops on a bus, subway or skytrain. It is lightweight as the pods are lightweight and thus, the vertical and horizontal infrastructure is lightweight. It could presumably even be hung off Lionsgate Bridge or Second Narrows ridge to the North Shore. Trains have a few disadvantages: they are very heavy. As such the infrastructure has to be very heavy if above the ground. A train is also quite expensive and as such it cannot go very frequent unless it is very high volume. A subway tunnel is extremely expensive, and creates massive disruption during construction. Trains are also often quite noisy.
A possible alternative solution, based on magnetic levation technology, is using lightweight pods that can be added or removed like a gondola or a chairlift, depending on capacity requirements. It doesn’t stop at every station, only at your target destination. Top speed can be over 200 km/h km/h. It is electric, green, fast and very quiet. Costs to install and operate are a fraction of a subway (5-10% according to the manufacturer but of course that has to be verified in real world field trials). A summary of the benefits is here.
There is a good one minute video here and more info here on their corporate website or at their facebook page.
I can easily envision this in lieu of the $3B+ Broadway subway, along clogged Marine Drive in W-Van and N-Van, and as such as a bi-directional North Shore loop through downtown and E-Van and Burnaby, and of course in lieu of the Surrey-Langley LRT.
Check it out. No more waiting for the right bus or train, quiet, green, no stops to your destination, super fast. Is this the future for Vancouver, or what ?
What are the (unadvertised) drawbacks ?
It’s a great idea and been around a long time. It never has seemed to really work and I don’t know if there is something fundamental about the it that can never be overcome or if it just keeps getting interfered with by other transportation interests. Maybe it has to be done in a specific way to work well.
Also personal rapid transit is often used to distract people away from regular rapid transit expansion so it has that association.
Still it would be way cool.
Oy gevalt. This thing again. Like fantasizing about scoring with a hot coworker, these pods are a wonderful thing to imagine being real, until you allow more than six seconds’ reflection about how it would actually work. You’ll then both realize and be thankful it will never happen.
You’d need tens of thousands of these things in service to recover the outlay of elevated track and maintenance. Multiple parallel lines so everyone can be whisked past stopped pods, whose combined weight on the Lions Gate would equal several buses. I don’t have the stamina at this hour to list the many, many ways this system is not feasible on a large urban scale.
It’s good to consider new ideas for our urban transportation networks. But this is an old idea, and an unworkable one. Take that sixth second and think about where, how, and why it would ever be built. Then get a compass card.
Each line gives you 11,500 passengers per hour per direction. Its also 1/10th the costs of light rail. So not sure where you are getting your ideas from?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTran
Oh, in the cartoon universe, I have no doubt it gives you 11,500 passengers per hour per direction. So do sidewalks. And maybe the small prototypes “they’re” forever testing in Israel and New Mexico can be manufactured and installed somewhat cheaper than the same length of light rail. But picture in your mind the tens of thousands of supporting poles required to support the latticework for a citywide system, how/where they’ll fit into existing rights of way, and the NIMBY fights over these things lacing through our precious urban fabric. Day care centres and hospices are routinely shouted down by neighbourhood groups. I’d pay good money to be at the first public meeting where residents were told that this thing was being wedged up their street.
There’s really no defending this thing. It’s just a lot of fuss over a bad idea.
This is Dan, by the way. The replying poster. Thought I was logged in.
You need to consider the alternatives and how disruptive they would be in comparison to this. I believe once the demonstration project is operational, it will expand to many different cities around the world. Just a few months and then we can see if that holds true….
I like the idea but unfortunately it has quite a few flaws that will prevent it from ever moving large numbers of people. Just think about the minimum safe stopping distance and maximum comfortable acceleration on a line like this. A pod needs to be able to stop without injuring people inside if a pod infront stops unexpectedly. You also need to be able to insert pods from a station starting from a stop and accelerating to the speed of the main route, this limits the safe allowable headways between pods. Since the pods are small you can not move many people. The next challenge is pod management, you need to be able to store large numbers of pods at a station…or be prepared to run a lot of empty pods to balance demand. It would not take long before all of the pods at station like King George are gone in the morning rush because most people are going in one direction. Or what about a station like 22nd street, do you show up and hope someone has stopped and left a pod or do they run pods empty from a central depo for you? There have been several well thought out trashings of this version of PRT but I don’t recall where right now. Basically if you have money to burn it could replace a moderate bus route but can not be mass transit.
The realist in me can’t help but imagine thousands of these pods gliding along the rails with newspaper taped to the inside windows; used as semi-permanent quarters for junkies, homeless, and prostitutes. As a means of getting these people off the streets, maybe there is hope for this system yet. Somebody tell the Mayor.
Maximum capacity of the system is 11,500 passengers per hour per direction is reached by spacing vehicles at 1/2 second spacing.[14] At 80 miles per hour (130 km/h), vehicles would be spaced at 59 feet (18 m) and stopped by multiple redundant safety systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTran
Cameras can be installed in the pods.
Assuming no delay in signaling, communication, mechanical actuation or sensing that would require 2G of deceleration. A 0.25s delay in application of braking would require 4G of deceleration.
It wouldn’t be unlikely that you’d induce injury at that point.
What engineer would sign off on these operating tolerances?
Well if you have multiple lines that breakoff and combine again to pick up and drop-off people then the acceleration can be very gentle. 11,500 passengers per hour is the traffic on the main line not each individual stop.
See my comment about the complexity of the switching movements below.
According to wiki they are counting on 6Gs of deceleration, not sure if that will be good for passengers even in a full crash safety belts…
Rico, where in wiki does it say 6Gs?
N, it is under the history section.
You misread it, it says, “could reliably achieve a 6-G deceleration” but that does not mean it has to do that. They are just saying it is technologically feasible to exert a force equivalent of 6G. Doesn’t mean that is necessary.
Also, 3,600 second per hour / 0.5s headway * 2 occupants per vehicle = 7,200 pphpd.
Ok granted I am not an engineer this is what wiki says. They are implementing in Israel right now so in a few months we will be able to say if Wiki was correct or Urbinflux.
Whoops, my math is backwards there. That should be 14,400 pphpd.
Presumably cameras that can’t be newspapered over.
I am unfamiliar with ANY regulatory body that would sign off on 0.5 second headways. What that means if one pod stops for any reason ALL of the pods following would crash, at 130km/hr. I am also pretty much certain they can’t insert pods from an intermediate station into the ‘mainline’ with 0.5 second headway. Thankfully we are not being asked to pay for this. I actually see no reason this could not theoretically work but can never see this working in reality…and never remotely at their stated capacity….and I will love seeing what the actual costs end up being.
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My thoughts exactly, since mag lev is not so new. If it truly were possible other firms would have built it today. As such, likely more hype than reality, but perhaps a great alternative to ripping up whole streets for 2 years while wedging in a subway at 10x the cost in certain medium density areas.
I could see this in N-Van and W-Can over Marine Drive, for example, and if lightweight enough over Lionsgate and Second Narrows making it a full loop via Hastings through downtown !
Take one part demand, add one part rate of speed, puree with one part each local and regional distance, add a crushed pepper of frequency for that all essential heat, add an urbanism mixer, tip back, then follow with a value per rider chaser. Bite into a lemon if long range funding is absent.
There will either be a purge or an aphrodisiac response, depending on one’s grounding in reality.
Oh, and call a real transit planner in the morning.
The big issue with these monorails and maglevs is the complexity of the switches. They’re complicated (read unreliable and expensive), and they’re unlikely to move quickly since the track has to change shape or move in it’s entirety.
When you have piddly passenger capacities per vehicle. then the overall capacity is hugely constrained. Lets be optimistic and say it takes 30 seconds for the switch to move, lock, allow one of these PRT pods to move though (since it has to wait a little ways back from the switch), and then reset once the pod has cleared the switch. If there are 5 seats in the pod, then your maximum line capacity is 600 people per hour. Less than all but the most infrequent bus lines. Less than a gondola or a chairlift.
The pods could have a higher capacity if you platoon them, or make them into trains but that defeats the point. The difficult part is breaking up the trains or platoons into pods that head toward a diverse set of destinations.
Trains get around this by having simple switches and by having huge capacities per train set. If 1,000 people can clear a switch every minute or so on a train, then it’s not that hard to have a couple different lines run in parallel. The bulk of the time is just spent moving the vehicle across the switch rather than waiting for the track to move.
Snake oil.
Enough to get Eric Schmidt of Google to be an investor:
https://www.cbinsights.com/company/skytran-funding