The Podcar: A Cross Between a Taxi and a Personal Bus
Masdar City, located within Abu Dhabi, is introducing personal rapid transit “podcars“.
Basically, a cross between the convenience of grabbing a cab and a public bus; the podcars will be a component of Masdar City’s public transportation system.
As part of Masdar City’s car-free design; these podcars will be part of a network of electric taxis without drivers (!). The first of these podcars (also known as personal rapid transit - PRT) are set to debut this year.
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According to Luca Guala, a planner at the consulting firm Systematica that designed the PRT network, it will
Initially, the system will be very simple, with only a couple of stations. During this period, the system will function kind of like an elevator – you press a button and go to the third floor. Think of it as a horizontal lift. Later on it will be more sophisticated, and passengers will be able to get within 100 meters of any destination
Since it is a prototype system, PRT is currently expensive to build. But, doesn’t it just scream “vision of the future”?
Image: Flyway Gotgatan via Flickr’s Media Commons
Most PodCar systems (and there are several) are quoting system costs of around $15-20 million per mile. The light rail line planned for Milwaukee is expected to cost $200 million per mile. MegaRail claims they can provide the same level of service as conventional LRT for 1/3 the cost of LRT. The assertion that LRT is even close to being cost-effectuve is just nutty. Also, the vehicle image included with this presentation is nothing like the PodCar vehicle that will be used in Masdar.
They wanted to do this in my city, but it would require knocking down alot of historic buildings. Glad they managed to find a willing city planning board.
How many “then historic” buildings had to be knocked down to make way for the buildings you now consider “historic”.
That said, I wouldn’t want the center of my streets taken up with monstrous suspension bridge rigs either.
Smart PRT designs are low-profile & relatively unobtrusive.
Google Skyweb Express or Ultra for some examples that are far superior to that shown above.
It certainly does scream “vision”. Someone needs to think through how it could be part of a city plan. Is the ultimate goal to get rid of cars, parking and pollution? Will the land under the sky bridges be available for other uses, such as pedestrians and bikes? It certainly wouldn’t be an improvement to have both clogged pedestrian-unfriendly streets AND clogged bridges overhead. All the cities are in chaos now, precisely because nobody thought through these issues ahead of time.
This picture is really misleading - it is like a grand monument to wasteful transportation. The PRT cars in the picture are larger than minivans and the columns are taller than buildings and about 8′ in diameter. One of the main points of PRT is to be affordable - meaning lightweight and small and UNobtrusive. I’ve seen many other drawings that show better ideas for the size and integration.
You obviously don’t want one of these running down a tiny urban side street, but you don’t really need that anyway. Most cities today have elevated highways running through parts of them, and some of them even have existing elevated or underground tracks for transit. Convert a few lanes of highway and some el/subway lines to this and you’ve got a decend improvement in transit trip time. Further, PRT is even more beneficial to outlying suburbs that currently don’t have adequate transit options than it is to dense cities that have many options, including walking and biking. So probably the best use of PRT in the near term is not so much to connect different parts of the city but to connect the suburbs to the city with efficient transit, and eventually even to connect the suburbs to each other.