Wednesday, July 2, 2014

Wednesday Wishlist: SkyTran Hover-Monorail PRT

High-speed Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is getting closer to reality. SkyTran is company operating out of the NASA campus in Mountain View that is building the future of transportation. Each autonomous pod accommodates up to two people and hangs on an inverted monorail using magnetic levitation (maglev). The first test loop will be built at the Aerospace Industry Campus in Lod, Israel and will initially operate oaf 45 MPH. Future systems could hit well over 100 MPH.

The first commercial system will be built in Tel Aviv for only $80 million. Imagine what a system like this could do for San Jose.

Source: Engadget



skyTran Animated Infographic from The Collaborative on Vimeo.

2 comments:

  1. In my opinion, any kind of elevated monorail would be better than surface light rail. :-)

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  2. Would likely suffer the same fate as VTA light rail. Stations are too spread out, miles from where you need to be. The would not be such a problem, except that areas surrounding the stations are typically designed to be car-centric, with your choice of completing the 'last miles' completely marginalized by local area road/intersection design and lack of basic infrastructure for anything other than a car. Dealing with the 'last miles' problem is not as sexy as a monorail, but would achieve results at a minuscule fraction of the cost, and its already well known how to do it.

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