One thing that Dan said on his post this morning was that a PRT system should be standardized in case a firm went out of business. I keep thinking of the last set of bogies he showed and wonder what will be the standardized mode of utilizing PRT.
One of the most useful ideas that I have seen is by Tritrack. They envision people buying a car type vehicle. I think a better use is to make it a vehicle that will cover some local stops but provide point to point transit in other locations.
I was thinking of Detroit and its population of 100,000 in 1874 and South Lyon’s 400 people. Today the Howell, Brighton and South Lyon area just barely have 100,000 people. Detroit did it on just 15 square miles in 1874) not 200 square miles (in 2010) .
By 1911 Detroit had about 500,000 people on 40 miles of land and streetcar lines that ran every two blocks apart. It had to be great! 500,000 in about 40 miles. Even today Jacksonville Florida has about as many people as Detroit yet takes up three times the land. So how do we provide transit for 100,000 spread out over 200 miles as compared to how we supply them transit in city life? Two different needs but there needs to be one solution in order to make them work together.
A system needs to be scaleable. Meaning that it starts out offering one thing and adds on to them at a later point. Say a system of four carriers that could also be converted into two carriers with room for two bikes. Drop off and pick up only. Yet the carrier can be also set up to drive off the system. So later on in some spots you set this up. The “cars” could be programed to drive to different entrances or drop off points.
Still later, platform cars could be incorporated that would hold an actual auto that could then be docked and driven off at its stop.
Scaleable and able to expand, that’s a system I can get behind. That’s the system that needs to be developed. That’s a system that needs to be thought of. (Yes, that is the system that we have.)
It might be a Maglev system or a wheel system or even a cog type system. Whatever it is it works and it will go at least a 150 miles per hour. We have to get around quick and 35 miles per hour is quick in the city. About 55 miles per hour is quick in the suburb’s. Let’s increase those figure’s. We can do a lot better than the 8 miles per hour on busses. Yes, we can increase those figures about 2 plus per mile. Yes, we can produce an incoming/outgoing speed of over 62 miles per hour. And yes we can produce a speed of over 130 miles per hour, over what would usually have taken you about 60 miles.
Think of this taking only a portion of the space required for a freeway interchange.
zBlog a perspective 