“Next there is the inevitable billing”

One of my neighbours was billed 42,000 quid for electricity about ten years ago because his account somehow got mixed up with the M25 road lighting account.

God only knows what would happen if the GPS program scrambled due to sun spot activity or similar.

The court case would be worth watching.

“The crown alleges that Mr. Murphy has failed to pay his road usage taxation, calculated by our infallible tracking system to be in excess of 1270 trillion pounds as a result his regular excursions to the Beta-Lyrae star system.”

I think we should introduce double decker roads, then we wouldn’t concrete over the countryside any more but could double the road capacity…

PaulD, wasn’t that more or less what the Segway was supposed to do? The Segway doesn’t answer that need, nor does any system in existence.

The most efficient motor transport I ever saw was the jeepneys in Manila. They go from one centre to another, rather than up and down one street, and you just wave to flag them down. The fare is calculated on the fly by the driver, and is typically 1/10 that of a taxi going more or less to the same locale.

I think as our society becomes more and more atomized, we’ll learn to value the journey time as social time and such methods (including carpooling, have you not heard of it?) will become ascendant for more than just economic reasons.

lol, seriously guys, it’s not “basically a monorail”, and it’s not a Segway! Have you looked at the site?

If you’ve seen it, think of iRobot, and the cars they drive in in that. They’re cars, not trains, trams, or two-wheeled gyroscopic geek-mobiles. They have 4 seats, and they go anywhere you like, how many monorails do you know that do that?

In answer to your questions: how is it kept clean? they’d get vandalised surely?

I assume they’d get cleaned in much the same way as the bus and train networks, the ones that aren’t in use are cleaned by people. There’s already a maintenance team, so a cleaning team isn’t a big step. And vandalism – I’ll quote from their site: “A design requirement for the system is to resist all possible effects from vandalism. Extensive CCTV and staff providing customer service will be used to deter possible vandals and to minimise the possible effects.”

And where would they put it in London? You know there are roads in London right?

The real point about this is that it’s the best of both worlds. Saying that people won’t walk that far is obviously silly, since people walk as far as the bus stop and train station for worse means of transport. Saying that they need a dedicated 2-meter wide track is silly because so do cars.

They have the benefit of cars (going from A to B without stopping at stations) with the benefits of trains (going from A to B without stopping for traffic) and the benefits of busses (convenient stops all over the place). They carry the disadvantages of none of them.

And StevenL, seriously…. “Anyway, if it’s not on a monorail how will they stop hoodies nicking them?”
Perhaps from the fact that they’re 500kg and look rather absurd being carried down the street – same way you stop people stealing cars. Unless you mean that they might drive them off, in which case you evidently haven’t read the site – because they’re centrally controlled, run on a dedicated network of track, and have no means to control them!!!

tremtastic, the capacity is enormous and far beyond our needs. The PRTs can be ‘driven’ at a small distance from the others nearby, routes are optimised, there are no driver mistakes, and there are no traffic lights or crossings. Those facts eliminate the vast majority of congestion problems – the only possible congestion would come from PRTs getting on and coming off the track, and it should be possible to make that a fairly slick process since it’s computer controlled. In addition, with some decent programming, if there’s congestion the computer should be able to fix it by coming up with alternative routes for new PRTs exceptionally quickly, so the congestion would not last long.

It’s capacity is limited by what we’re willing to spend. Obviously a balance has to be achieved, but within reasonable prices it should be possible to set up a system that easily meets requirements. It’s designed to cover a 5-mile radius densely populated area after all.

and “Cars would have the benefits of all three of your points if they existed in a perfect world, with perfect drivers and enough empty roads!” ?
This is exactly what these are! Cars with perfect drivers, existing in a perfect (if limited) world, on enough empty road.

As someone whose city is going through a building phase, I feel it necessary to remind you that while the overhead lines are being built, the roads in question will have to be shut down. Do not delude yourself that such things can be built without disruption.

If they really work so well, why not replace roadways with tracks, at least in city centres? I can’t think of a single successful implimentation of this kind of transport, whether on corporate campus or in a city. Surely if it worked that well, it would long ago have been installed? It’s been talked about since the Fifties.

Tremtastic – you’re always getting the arguments muddled up, my dear chap. Paul’s right about this one. We need a bold strategy for solving our future transport needs and it will undoubtedly be a massive undertaking. You seem intent on finding reasons <i>not</i> to do things, based on the thinking that we are a nation of divs. You are a triumph of New Labour, miserabilism and misanthropy.

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