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SkyTran - The Future Of Travel

TOareaFan said:
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.
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That probably just about sums it up, a small closed circuit system. Maybe extend to include the Eaton Centre, City Hall, Bloor/Yonge and stuff for personalized point to point transit could work. But beyond that not really.
 
M II A II R II K said:
That probably just about sums it up, a small closed circuit system. Maybe extend to include the Eaton Centre, City Hall, Bloor/Yonge and stuff for personalized point to point transit could work. But beyond that not really.
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A better place where the capacity of the system might be able to keep up with demand would be Eglinton and Don Mills. Why try to fit it in in a place where it would never work? These systems are best in a disperse office park type environment where demand is very spread out.
 
Darwinkgo said:
These systems are best in a disperse office park type environment where demand is very spread out.
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I would think that the problem in such cases is that the huge infrastructure costs can't be justified where demand is spread out. This is not a cheap system to build compared to buses, and it has a lot of fixed infrastructure, so it needs a lot of use to be worthwhile.

Honestly, when I look at these kind of systems I don't see practical mass transit -- I see a system for middle-class people who are uncomfortable riding in a cab with a foreign driver.
 
Darwinkgo said:
A better place where the capacity of the system might be able to keep up with demand would be Eglinton and Don Mills. Why try to fit it in in a place where it would never work? These systems are best in a disperse office park type environment where demand is very spread out.
Click to expand...

I think the only model (financial) that this would work is if you allowed a private proponent to build it (it really does not fit in with public transit...too much investment for too narrow a user constituency) and get their pay back from usage. That is why I suggested that Bremner to the EX stretch. You could design it so that the only places with stops to get on and off at "destinations" that might pay you (either through a surtax or an annual fee) for delivering them customers. So along Bremner you have SkyDome, the Aquarium, the hotels (present and planned), etc etc.

The further you spread out those end points, the more the cost of the system and the harder it is to create a financial payback model.
 
"The Future of Travel" circa 1965. nothing new here. We should be especially resistant to this idea given our use of streetcars...imagine what happens on that single strip of track when one car has a technical problem and gets stuck! not to mention the passengers who now are not just stuck, but also hanging two stories above ground with no walkway or superstructure to climb out on. I remember as a child when the cable cars at the cne kept breaking down towards the end...lots of unhappy people rescued with giant ladders brought by the fire department.

this is strictly a tourist/office park/novelty system.

anybody seriously proposing this for the TTC should be pelted with tomatoes
 
^

The people at The Gondola Project are serious about this.

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I read in a transportation book that they have been proposed many times - all in vain.

Hence, these stupid cable plans should be viewed just as "fantasy".
 
I guess the idea is that failures would be rare. I don't see a good reason that this is not achievable. Secondly, such a system is designed to use a network, not linehaul. If any stretch of the network was blocked by a disabled vehicle, traffic could be rerouted on another path. Thirdly, all the vehicles caught behind the disabled vehicle could be reversed to a station where passengers could debark safely. Fourthly, the passengers in the disabled vehicle could either be towed to a station using a specialized towing vehicle, or removed using a cherry picker.

This is not a half baked idea. If anyone is interested in some of the engineering challenges and a pretty solid workaround, there is a fellow writing a blog about an attempt to design a flexible open-source PRT standard. Check it out.

I think this is an idea worth serious consideration. It has the potential to operate without subsidy, as well as reduce travel times, congestion, and energy use. We will never have a decent transit system. It is just so fantastically expensive to build subways and LRT that we will never get there.
 
A Popular Science cartoon ca. 1955 updated for our current era. Huge amounts of ugly infrastructure for no particular purpose. The illustrations all show unidirectional lines, by the way, which relegates this to a Detroit - or Miami - style "people mover", the chief purpose of which was to fill the pockets of a given corporation for a given period of time.
 
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