ULTra Personal Rapid Transit

[Fred.S]

The big problem with public cars is you have no way of knowing the condition of the car you will be using. People will leave their trash, spill soda on the seat. Some might defecate, others might do even worse damage. In the end, you might end up with a car that isn't fit for riding in. How do we prevent this?

That'll definitely be an issue... My hope is that a system like this would only use card-based fare (credit cards and/or something like presto), have cameras installed in the vehicles and stations, and have a "reject/clean vehicle" button in the vehicle and stations.

This way, if a vehicle is flagged as dirty, someone at a central control can check the vehicle via camera, check the camera/fare logs, and fine the offender (charge their credit card/fare card).

This obviously wont stop everything that can happen, but I can handle a little trash/graffiti, and I think 99.9% of the population won't be using the vehicles as a toilet...

 

[afransen]

That'll definitely be an issue... My hope is that a system like this would only use card-based fare (credit cards and/or something like presto), have cameras installed in the vehicles and stations, and have a "reject/clean vehicle" button in the vehicle and stations.

This way, if a vehicle is flagged as dirty, someone at a central control can check the vehicle via camera, check the camera/fare logs, and fine the offender (charge their credit card/fare card).

This obviously wont stop everything that can happen, but I can handle a little trash/graffiti, and I think 99.9% of the population won't be using the vehicles as a toilet...

Most of these are solved problems. Check out the SkyTran website as they address most of these concerns.

 

[afransen]

There's a fellow working on an interesting project to design an open-source standard for PRT track, systems, and vehicles. His goal is to create a non-proprietary standard so that cities and other clients can adopt a system knowing that they are not totally beholden to one single maker once they put the infrastructure in.

It's pretty interesting to read his thought-process from his first post, and he's definitely given me some confidence that PRT is not a totally pie-in-the-sky idea, but one that merits some serious consideration.

His blog is at http://openprtspecs.blogspot.com/. I think that he would likely value the input of the huge pool of people here.

 

[TJ O'Pootertoot]

PRT was one of the more interesting components of Robert Calthrope's plan for Langstaff Gateway at Yonge/Hwy 7.

He saw it as a good way to funnel people from the semi-isolated community to the huge transit hub just across Hwy. 407. It's a bit pie in the sky but it sure is cool.

(There's a Langstaff thread here...)