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SkyTran - The Future Of Travel

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SkyTran - The Future Of Travel


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Read More: http://www.skytran.net/phpsite/home/Home Intro.php

SkyTran is a new transportation system in development at NASA Ames Research and other locations. It's a complete re-imagining of travel: vehicles that drive themselves on elevated "guideway" micro-freeways so light they can be supported by utility poles or attached to buildings. SkyTran will have about 200-MPG equivalent energy efficiency, twice the Automotive X Prize requirement. Its elevated guideways can be built quickly, without disrupting neighborhoods. They will cost much less to build and maintain than mass transit lines or freeways, but carry more people.

- SkyTran vehicles will wait like taxicabs at boarding platforms above sidewalks or attached to buildings' upper floors. You just sit down, tell your computer "driver" where you want to go, and relax. It merges onto the elevated micro-freeway and drives nonstop to your destination, then parks itself after you get out.

- With no engine, tires or batteries, a SkyTran vehicle is small, light and aerodynamic. It consumes 1/10 the energy of a car, even at higher speeds.

- Computer-controlled SkyTran vehicles, mechanically locked to micro-freeways (with no intersections) above the traffic, will be much safer than cars. In emergencies, their brakes can stop much faster than a car, since they are protected from weather inside the guideway shell. Because of the closer spacing this permits, a single guideway has the passenger capacity of a three-lane freeway.




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hmm...i duno...it looks alright to me, but i dun think toronto will have this kind of stuff anytime soon...i mean if this was to be built near the downtown area, i think it would be too complicated...unless you build one long track running from uptown to downtown...then there's a possibility.
 
hmm...i duno...it looks alright to me, but i dun think toronto will have this kind of stuff anytime soon...i mean if this was to be built near the downtown area, i think it would be too complicated...unless you build one long track running from uptown to downtown...then there's a possibility.

Could see this being built on an expirmental basis,though, on a touristy stretch....say from that new south door of Union (by Telus and ACC) along Bremnar...across Bathurst onto Fort York then on into the Ex......think of it, it passes, the CN Tower, the Convention Centre, Steam Whistle Park, the proposed new aquariam, Rogers Centre, then goes to Fort York, The Ex, Ontario Place BMO Field, Ricoh...maybe even pay for it via a small surcharge on tickets to venues/attractions that it serves.
 
Wow, a public semi-enclosed gondola. It's like a taxi cab without driver supervision! And it has tinted windows? Amazing! I just wouldn't want to be the one who has to clean these things out at the end of the day.

The actual construction of this type of system would have the same type of arguments that any PRT would have, namely is the capital investment worth it for the number of people moved?

Just for clarification, is this essentially a high-speed gondola? I didn't exactly catch the method of propulsion in the description. "no engine" could mean either a) electric motor or b) track propelled
 
We've been over these schemes many times here. Bottom line is, if some billionaire wants to build it somewhere, fine, but I don't want a cent of my money going to a pointless experiment like this, when traditional mass transit already works.
 
The only way this would become more effective than traditional mass transit is if a network of these was built all across the city so people could use this to get from anywhere to anywhere with little supplemented walking. But such a network would be ridiculously expensive to build, be expensive for the riders, and would be a massive legal headache, and is generally really unattractive. In the end this is nothing more than a computer operated car on rails.
 
Could see this being built on an expirmental basis,though, on a touristy stretch....say from that new south door of Union (by Telus and ACC) along Bremnar...across Bathurst onto Fort York then on into the Ex......think of it, it passes, the CN Tower, the Convention Centre, Steam Whistle Park, the proposed new aquariam, Rogers Centre, then goes to Fort York, The Ex, Ontario Place BMO Field, Ricoh...maybe even pay for it via a small surcharge on tickets to venues/attractions that it serves.

yea i think it will be more fit if it was targeted at the tourists. instead of walking around the whole park (CNE for example), tourists can take the sky tran and just go around without having to walk all the way...
 
What capacity can such a system have? This seems far more cute than practical -- it certainly isn't going to handle the nearly 1 million daily trips of the Toronto subway.
 
We will have driverless taxis years before any system like this actually gets operational at any scale. Hopefully then the PRT industry will stop flogging there wears and wasting investor money.
 
If you think computer guided vehicles are a solution to congestion, or even safe enough to make liability insurance a reasonable cost for use in a city street in mixed traffic, you're dreaming. PRT has much more potential, it's just that no company has yet attacked the problem for quite the right angle. PRT has a lot of things going for it.
 

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