On this weekend, I found two reasonably new ideas of moving people around. One is significantly cooler than the other. I will talk about the cooler one first.
CyberTran : The problem with the current rail system is that the train has to stop at every stations it was scheduled. As a consequence, from commuter perspective, if he want to travel pass 10 stations, the train has to stop unnecessarily at 9 stations. From this perspective, we see that the current form of urban rail is inefficient. Since societies compete by the speed at which information/capital flows though the city (in this case, human capital), inefficiency in public transportation means losing competitive edge.
I believe that CyberTran can reduce this inefficiency. First let me explain what is CyberTran, then the potential benefits of CyberTran.
CyberTran is a complete transportation infrastructure which consists of the vehicle (called tran), the guideway and station. It doesn't have a schedule like conventional train. The commuters select their destinations and after waiting for a short period of time, the vehicle will pick them up and take the passengers directly to the destination without stopping at stations in between.
On the contrary to convention wisdom in public transport, tran is a computer-controlled ultra-lightweight train which can carry at most 20 people at any given time. If there are more than 20 people wanting to go to the same destination, then more trans will keep coming until all passengers have been picked up. Since tran is always stored in the station when it is not in used, the waiting time is generally short.
Trans run on separate guideway. One advantage of lightness of tran is that less structure components are required to build the guideway. This has a benefit of lowering initial cost of construction and allows the guideway to be completely built - with similar cost - where it has less interference with other form of traffics.
The stations are designed so that trans can bypass them without interfering with stationary trans there. Hence, they are located off the main guideway. This increases the average speed since other cars don't have to slow down. Further, since most energy is spent on accelerating and decelerating vehicle, by maintaining cars at near constant speed, one can achieve higher energy efficiency.
The unused trans are stored at the station and can be recharged using solar cell (or other appropriate form of renewable energy). Therefore, it has an additional benefit which is; no large warehouse is needed to store vehicles.
Once passengers are picked up, tran will accelerate to the speed before joining the main guideway. As the vehicle is controlled by computer, there is less chance of collision. This is demonstrated in Morgantown PRT system in West Virginia, where excellent record was maintained during its 30 years in operation.
Its advantages:
- Safe with low level of collision.
- Lightness of vehicle means less is needed for construction of the guideway.
- It uses less energy to move similar population than the conventional train with regenerative braking system in place.
- With virtually no stopping in between stations (it can be designs by some clever algorithm to stop at a few stations.), it can achieve higher speed.
- It costs less than train system to build and operate.
- Less polution.
- Increase commuter travelling freedom, and less stressful.
- Tran can travel on the slope of up to 20% in comparison with 5% for train. This means it can navigate through obstacles more easily than train.
All in all, I like this idea. The next one is bus rapid transit. In considering for construct more study is needed. But in term of pollution, CyberTran has more potential to be carbon-free during its operation.
Here is a video of similar idea.
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