ULTra PRT sustainable transit 2

[mayflowerstein]

How does rain or snow effect these little trains?

[abbyandy]

This is awesome I wlll pass this on to the new Mayor and city council of

Abbotsford British Columbia I am sick and tired of the stop and go and

stop transit buses we need something better this is it the future is now

[2WAYFM]

How f-ing awesome. Nothing more to say.

[xilentpwn]

The Venus Project

[tri400]

this is elevated, unfortunately Aussies are against elevated anything =(

[ocf1fan1]

Wow that's so very advanced & futuristic! Now if only they would build that public transit system here in the Greater LA area in Southern California.

[lievenvv]

nice idea, but if lots of people travel along similar routes it wouldnt be very energy efficient?

[BleedingHeart1970]

@esbielab ah i get it

[BleedingHeart1970]

"traveling up to 3 times faster than a car" so how fast?

highway speeds? or if it goes at 60mph, we drive at 20?

hmmm... LOL. still like ULTra :)

[esbielab]

@BleedingHeart1970 . Cars have to stop at stop signs and stop lights, and cars are delayed by traffic. The effective speed (including stops) in a US office park is somewhere around 12 mph, and sometimes less. In comparison, non-strop PRT running at 25 mph is much faster than the effective speed of a car.

[MoOtJeMan]

Does this mean all of London might get this? :D

[a4d2d0]

this could work on big campuses pretty good too...

[nicelogin2]

Will you see me getting off this thing once I get on?! NO WAY!

[DaedalEVE]

Fuck Shweeb... this is a far better option!

[futate01]

I like how when they promote these ideas they always show how easily "a few people" can enjoy the system. OK. A few people sure, but if this is intend to help with mass transit, lets say in Manhattan, where you have hundreds of thousands of people, all of whom come in the morning and leave in the afternoon how would a few of these carts handle all of them.

If each holds four people you will need at least twenty five thousand of them on a skinny little rail. That's another traffic jam.

[esbielab]

@futate01 PRT capacity is surprisingly high, but PRT should be part of a tapestry of green transit solutions. PRT is not a replacement for Manhattan's subway system - but PRT can work as a complement to such high capacity line-haul transit systems, by solving "the last-mile problem."

[mickandmj]

Its not that new!!! see Morgantown PRT opened in 1975!!!

people have been excited about PRT since the late 1960s...we have not yet got there yet

[esbielab]

Morgantown is GRT with 21-person vehicles. There's a difference between GRT and PRT.

[mickandmj]

@esbielab they can operate as GRT or PRT

[esbielab]

@mickandmj 21-person vehicle is a "group." GRT and PRT both have station bypass.

PRT & GRT definitions: tinyurl dot com / 29pnegt

[eof12]

@NEWREDDAWN: EVs are very reliable, it's not as complicated as classic car... Malfunction will be very rare I believe, and when you monitor all onboard systems, you can predict many of them even before it happen. And if it happen, it will be just pulled away in few minutes, I believe, there will be some maintenace sections all around the grid... But still, I believe, this can be made very reliable...

[eof12]

this is so amazing video! I can imagine, when this is build around all around the city, how to use just for going to supermarket, or to the pub, to the worl.... Just imagine the difference between taking the bus and this! This is so amazing!, I wish it's already all around my city :)

[jeffsandychelsea]

Why are they using those pods that require a wide guideway with railings? Just have the cars take power from a rail like subways do, but hide it inside the box beam so that it looks like the cars are floating along the rail. It's a much cheaper way to do PRT.

[Rickyrab]

Why not use present day automobiles as the basic vehicle, and existing roads and railways as the basic infrastructure? No need to create a radically new vehicle, we could be running Hondas and SUVs and Toyotas and Fords and vans and motorhomes on those roads automatically.

[ksrm2]

The dream of Cabintaxi finally realised

?v=ERdF0FK-2io

[applesweeter]

Dear All,

I have some questions about psychology:

(1) Why do we love space-age architecture?

(2) Why do we like to travel in space-age transportation system, suah as ULTra PRT sustainable transit?

(3) If ULTra vehicles can floating in the air, will this attractive to passengers?

THANK YOU IN ADVANCE for your creative ideas and brainstorm!!! :)

(3)

[wishingstar22]

Again, what a cool concept. You walk to a station, find an empty vehicle waiting for you. You choose your destination and off you go. No other stops and no other passengers to worry about.

[RijenRijen]

No use for this... i have a taxi that come closer to my door than this thing.

[mrdivot22]

I'd wager this thing wouldn't charge you $25 + tip to go 10 miles.. That quarter-mile walk to the station might take some weight off and if it was only a couple of dollars to ride it'd save you hundreds of dollars a year that you could then spend on beer instead.

[wishingstar22]

Amazing. Imagine these in suburban areas.

[magic1926]

If a city had this system how would you pay to go in the pod? I am assuming that you would pay before you went in the pod, but if there were strangers in the pod how would they pay too?Great System I wished our city had it. I could totally see this work in Silicon Valley.

[mrdivot22]

It said the vehicles were nonstop so there wouldn't be strangers in the pod.. They would have got out at their destination.

[papero40]

it here!

[lpetrazickis]

This wouldn't scale to actual public transit volumes. The space requirements are obviously the same as for cars -- and no one is going to build 6-lane elevated guideways even if those were somehow an improvement over car-oriented land development patterns. The world needs more light rail and subways, not this toy for the rich.

[hughtub]

The ideal is high speed, safe attentionless, non-intrusive transportation. The raised track system is safe, attentionless and non-intrusive but perhaps not fast, but would you agree this would be neat if normal cars could be adapted (future model cars) to fit on this track system?

[mrdivot22]

You're not taking into account other factors. The zipper effect of pods merging eliminates bottlenecks at areas where cars merge on and off the freeway.

Able to bypass traffic signals in the city centers would make for a faster commute.

A computer operated system that could run pods at speeds up to 50 mph only a few feet apart from each other.

No more ranting at that idiot on the road that's holding things up... Imagine!

[MrGreedy1004]

Less pollution!!!

[sega31098]

Imagine a city that is completely PRT! A smooth, non-polluted city would help. You would get the vibrancy of a big city and the air of a small town! People could park their cars on the outskirts of the city and take PRT throughout the area. Of course, we would still need the metro in case of congestion. But this would change the world for the better. No more drunk driving, no more road rage, no more hit-and-run, no more road-related accidents!

[tylertyler82]

socialism! egads!

[madblock555]

This units never break rules, never get drunk, never sleep and so on.

So crashes will be much more rare, than on regular road.

[kermit56780]

I agree with isaiahheaden the ONLY way this could be made viable is for the crowd willing to pay that little bit more but even THEN its gonna end in tears! skipper242424 i agree!

[Skipper242424]

What happens when there is a crash. The whole system would lock up and hundreds of people would be stuck 15 feet up in the air.

[isaiahheaden]

I would like to call bull shit on this. There are too many people for this to work smoothly. You will have to wait and it will be overcrowded and abused.

Four people to a car is stupid. Look at the metro. That system barely works. The only way this could work is if each ride cost you like $20 so they can keep the damn thing working. Two thumbs down!

[esbielab]

The customer for the London Heathrow System, BAA, is very happy:

"This innovative system forms part of BAA's plan to transform Heathrow, improve the passenger experience and reduce the environmental impact of our operation through the development of cutting edge, green transport solutions. ... Provides considerable environmental benefits, saving more than half of the fuel used by existing forms of public or private transport."

[quikboy2]

This seems nice and interesting, but how long could it last before the system of abuse goes in?

I'm talking about the usual punks that might tag/urinate/litter/damage the insides of these pods, making the system less ideal to use and become very unattractive when the pods look so messed up.

Camera surveillance inside the pods might be the solution, with officers ready to apprehend people at the station, but we know how we all feel about surveillance cameras.

[alexnguk]

Instigate a lock-down feature when warm liquid (urine-like) substance is detected inside the cabin ...

[ANDSENS]

The thing I find most exciting about this is that you can have the tracks above ground level.

Imagine a city with no roads! No need to look left and right when crossing the street because there is none. It would all be sidewalk!

The typical car-city noise would be gone. You would take a lot of the stress of living in a city away.

[mugupo10]

price tag? if that thing crash it can easily be 100% fatal.

[tahiri07]

They are from Cardiff

I've seen a documentation of this thats incredible

[cprich22]

now if you had lots you could connect them up all over the country

[reazrj]

hmm..... think its more effective only where needed- high intensity areas..mayb cities close to each other culd be some how linked

[powdersprings30127]

Interesting concept and I like it, but unfortunately I think it'll be literally 100+ years before Americans are willing to give up personal vehicles for such a system, even if it were very widespread. Though we'll see more of them like at the London airport sooner.

[nathankoren]

These *are* personal vehicles! Just not personally *owned* vehicles.

[sammydenyc]

it looks like ULTra and Vectus are gonna be big time competitors for PRT...

[PissRhyss]

hopefully in the near future, the roads will be gone...

and all around us will be tracks for this things...

this is both cool

and environment friendly..

[quikboy2]

That would be ideal if we didn't need to have roads in cities, but how are we going to transport goods, building material, supplies, or anything of bulk? Roads will still probably be there, but maybe restricted for necessary use only.

[MissJagUR]

Brilliant! Can't wait to try them at London Heathrow airport.

[747K]

Let see more of this!!!!!!!

[wouter249]

this is incredible !

[crazybumptastic]

This is the transport of the future! This company has it nailed and is showing us the shape of things to come. Well done!

[olipool]

roar

[liamdg]

wow

[Lndn59]

when does this come to heathrow, looks real cool

[747K]

ooooooooool !!!!