We had a go round on this subject a year or so ago. I argued with Erik R
that it might be too costly per 'vehicle'. I still think that there are a
number of obstacles in its way but that we should try to find the money
for the test track. Maybe is time that we all started to hammer on the
politicians about this.
Some potential problems that I can think of:
- heating and cooling the vehicle passenger areas.
- where to put the guideways in residental areas without looking terribly ugly.
- Cold and hot weather contact with guidance systems and power.
When I first saw these in Scientific American in the early '70s the
problem was onboard and system computer resources. I doubt if that is a
problem anymore. In fact maybe it could be done with rubber tire vehicles
on normal streets with some sort of in road guideway - kind of like the
"Johny Cabs" in the movie "Total Recall". It sounds like fuel cells that
process many types of organics are soon to be economically viable. These
could obviate fixed guideways.
The payoff of being able to live without a car is well worth looking into.
That is what keeps many of us in our cars. There are just so many places
that you just can't get to from the core cities without a car. Perhaps
this would solve that problem.
We would probably still need streets because of deliveries, utility
maintenance, and public safety like fire, ambulance and police. That is
why I would like to see PRTs that use the existing streets with guideways
builtin.
[I haven't checked out the links - maybe Taxi 2000 deals with these issues.]
And yes, there is probably a corporate interest in not having an
economically viable system of transportation that doesn't involve buying
$20,000 vehicles every 5 years, and consuming huge amounts on less
renewable resources. They won't fund their demise.
> I am also very interested in PRT and am rather amazed
> that it is perpetually going nowhere. I have not
> visited taxi 2000 for probably a year, and do not know
> where the rhetoric stands, but as of about a year ago
> they were claiming that a test track could be built
> and tested for around 5 million...if this is the case,
> why hasn't it happened yet? If this system is as good
> as it sounds, I would suspect that getting
> grants/investments to cover this initial outlay would
> be immensly easy...what gives?
Rich McMartin
Bryant Neighborhood.
