SkyTran - Individual Maglev System
- Filed under: Weird Science
- Date: Mar 1,2008
The American company UniModal Transport Solutions developed a concept for a very high-capacity and high-speed Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) network. Pictures and informations of this sky transportation vehicle are showed below.
This SkyTran system operates with individual, two-passenger vehicles, which are propelled and suspended by a maglev system from overhead guideways. These are laid out in a one mile by one mile networked grid throughout the city. A large number of small departure and exit portals are placed underneath the guideways at approximately every 400 metres or at every city block.
SkyTran has no fixed routes or timetables. Users can simply enter any departure portal, get into the first empty vehicle in the queue and select their destination. The vehicle then speeds up on the acceleration lane and enters the high-speed overhead guideway.
At the selected exit portal, the vehicle enters a deceleration lane where the speed is reduced until it stops at the arrival portal. Individual vehicles are capable of speeds up to 160 kilometres per hour within city limits or 240 kilometres per hour between cities. A very short braking distance allows a distance between traveling vehicles of a mere 25 metres.
56 Responses for "SkyTran - Individual Maglev System"
They look way too small for overweight people, and the steps with no elevators probably violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Cute, but it’s not wheelchair accessible, so it would be illegal in the United States.
Very cool, I’d use it.
a good idea…inovative …
but what i think is that this idea is to “costly ” to be put into practice in a brd world country such as South Africa (hosts of 2010 world cupand my home)…but for 1st world country it cud be good..
.I doubt it will bring about any good in S,A.
It’s interesting how designers never think of people who might have difficulties climbing up those stairs to get into the vehicles. It’s the year 2008, can’t they finally show some understanding for those with physical disabilities?
Pipe dream
I vote yes for a $2 billion project which will require years to build and will require radial restructuring of most cities.
Did I mention that it really doesn’t help the environment? That’s because we’ll need a coal power plant just to power this tram system.
And I sure hope they come up with a way to heat and cool the tram cars… and they factor in the weather… of which we get some nasty winter and summer storms at times.
Well, it’s nice to dream anyway.
looks great, but if they expect it to work with only 1 car loading at a time then the’ll have a serioous bottleneck
Dustin, that can probably be avoided by building a moving entrance ramp just like Disney.
these will smell
One other problem with the system. With a personal car, you can load your packages into it, particularly into the trunk, and they’ll be there when you get back. If you’re shopping, running errands, etc. you MUST have that capacity in your transportation. Just think about carrying a dozen bags of groceries accumulated over the (for my family) three different places we go to on ONE Saturday grocery shopping trip. If the system doesn’t have a way to store/reserve “safe space” for personal cargo, it will fail.
actually… it will be quite the opposite. cars not in use will be at the station waiting to be used to conserve energy… with the right amount of cars on the system there should be absolutely no bottlenecks ever, maybe just a quick moving line.
dustin: looks great, but if they expect it to work with only 1 car loading at a time then the’ll have a serioous bottleneck: One car loading at a time per block and cars not stopping simply pass by overhead. Realistically though this could be refined for certain areas to have multiple car loading by simply having a larger platform at busier areas.
Dustin, I think you’ve missed the point entirely. The point of a personal transport system is to eliminate cars while still allowing people to get as close to their final destination as possible without the negatives of current public transport (waiting 20 minutes for the next bus, having to transfer to six different subway lines, etc). Without a set schedule, there should always be a transport unit available at any station. Instead of waiting for a train and then having 200 people board, these units are constantly being boarded. It’s not that much of a bottleneck, especially when you think about the fact that a lot of the major hubs no longer exist, because people will be able to board the system closer to their home and exit closer to their final destination.
There is no American company that will build anything 400 “meters” apart, because we don’t have “meters” in America. Also, we don’t have “queues”, we have “lines”.
“looks great, but if they expect it to work with only 1 car loading at a time then the’ll have a serioous bottleneck”
Perhaps, but how much of a bottleneck is it to push through a crowd of people getting off a subway?
Look at the last pic. I think they thought of that.
Variation on this is the only way to reduce car usage as the existing mass transit is simply too 19th century (ex. it is about 4 times cheaper and two times faster [also more convenient] for me to use a car to come in/out NYC from 45 miles away). But, it needs to be built with the intention to spread it into the whole regions (at least in the suburb dominated USA).
As for Dustin’s comment, the main idea is to make it car-like convenient: “A large number of small departure and exit portals are placed underneath the guideways at approximately every 400 metres or at every city block.” This is the key part of the design and it eliminates gigantic expensive “train stations”.
Bottleneck as in how? Like the bottleneck at the taxi rank or the bottleneck as you wait for everyone else to board your train? I dont quite see how its going to be any worse than those forms of transport I just mentioned…
The idea itself is great, in that its just a slightly modernised PRT (personal rapid transit/transport). Computer controlled individual cars could be switched at intersections much quicker than human driven vehicles so I believe this is probably the future of transport. Has the privacy, speed and directness of cars, and the cost and convenience advantages of public transport.
I had the same thought at first, but take another look at the last rendering. There appear to be two separate rails, one a main line and another that acts as a sort of “exit ramp” for loading and unloading. If the system is laid out in 1-mile grids, as proposed, with dozens of these loading stations throughout the city, it should be a fairly efficient system. Plus you have to take into consideration people like me who would be too scared to even go near a tiny little car that flies around the city at hundreds of KPH…
There are some serious problems in this design. I see it only being a good fantacy but nowhere near practicable.
2 passengers per car is a silly idea. How does Mom get her 3 kids downtown and back again?
A lot of problems pop up in my mind.
First off, those cars look really cramped for larger passengers and there seems to be no place for even a little cargo - like a few shopping bags.
Second, having such private cars is a massive safety and maintenance problem - this is a big problem for public toilet as well. In inner cities people will use them for drug deals, drug use, perhaps even urinals. Internal graffitti and window etching.
Finally what happens to the entire system when a single car fails on the express track?
why don´t you make a 3D animation, or ask the community to help you out with one? Pictures are good, movies are great and with the community help, that would cost you close to zero.
And please don´t have it required to give you me email.
To be practical it needs more seats (in a different arrangement)for parents with small kids.
They need to build one of those in my city.
You’re wrong Dustin, the system would work well even in a dense urban environment because you could have multiple stations etc. This looks like the best available solution for solving oil dependency. Combining this type of transit system with renewable power would mean free transportation and increased efficiency for our society. I hope Barack Obama will be our next president and acting as such, invest in this important technological development.
pretty cool stuff. needs some improvements.
for crowded areas, it’ll provide great relief.
I believe the idea is that instead of servicing a 5 or 10 ( or more ) block radius as a subway does it is only servicing a 1 - 2 block radius. Also unlike current mass transit which has large capacity vehicles which travel a predetermined route, here you have small vehicles with the freedom to go anywhere on the network. No doubt there would be bottle-necks in certain areas, and the kinks would take some working on. Over all, however, I think that a system like this is best equipped to support our current urban lifestyles.
This is so cool!
Bottleneck? lets test that with some math. In the case where everyone in the city wanted to go somewhere at once: Say upto 6 people could board and depart per minute and you had one station every 400m (6.25 stations per km2)
Hong Kong = 6,407 people per km2. It would take just under 3 hours to move everyone. Too long perhaps if everyone went home at the same time but they don’t in Hong Kong.
How about the 20th most populaous area in the world (Mayotte, France) 499 people per km2? about 13 and a half minutes to clear that bottleneck. I would say noone would be complaining about that!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
it’d be slow if the queue is super long and each pod can only sit two. maybe sitting four per pod is more practical.
Safety issues will cost too much.. You would nee cameras on every single car..
What would you do with drunk idiots throwing empty bottles at them?
Overall concept is ok, a bit bottlenecked and i wonder how much it will take to see them all around…
Looks good, except that they need to be 4 person sized instead of 2… For situations like; A parent with more than 1 young child, Two people with baggage, etc. Also agree with Dustin, the loading areas (at least in high traffic areas) definitely need to be able to handle multiple vehicles at once.
two-seat mass transit. makes a lot of sense. NOT
Considering how far it goes, it would make more sense to build a monorail. I don’t see why public transit needs to be disguised as a car before people use it.
Wheelchair accessible?
Not to mention, the inside of those things would be trashed within a week. Great idea, though. Probably be cheaper than those boondoggle regional railroads that cities are wasting money on.
Since it is not wheel chair accessible, it will be pronounced dead on arrival be bureaucrats and lawyers.
Great idea, my wife and four young kids will fit nicely into a two seater car! It’s sure to be a great success (NOT)
What happens if someone pukes/defecates/etc. in the car you were due to get into?
Dustin … you’re mistaken. See high speed detatchable lifts (skiing). Or a freeway.
Wow~~looks in the 2050
This is just gona freak out/confuse the old people even more.
It looks great, but we have to wait until it is implemented.
The main problem here i think is, how they sync with the each individual block. What makes it different from Railways?
Thanks & Regards,
Uday
http://udayfun.blogspot.com/
Everyone is just too doggone literal here. These are CONCEPT drawings. They are not blueprints. They’re meant to convey the overall feel of the project, not serve as zoning and planning proposals. Could they be made wheelchair accessible? Of course (elevators, seats that fold down into the floor like a mini-van, loading at ground level, etc.).
The correct parallel to draw is to taxi cabs. These are not cars, they’re not trains, and they’re not a subway system. They serve the same purpose as taxis. Just like you can’t leave your groceries in a taxi and expect them to be there when you come back, you can’t do that here. You probably wouldn’t plan a 3-store grocery trip using a taxi, either. Just like most taxis are not especially wheelchair capable, so are these. Just like people defile taxis, it will happen here, too. Surely it’s possible to have at least some of these things load at ground level and then be elevated up to the maglev rail (like a ski lift).
It is interesting that most people saw the lack of accessibility quickly. That’s good feedback to the designers. But to write the whole thing off because the concept drawings didn’t include elevators is stupid and shortsighted.
And the guy who whines about ‘queues’ instead of lines just reinforces the dumb stereotype that Americans are parochial and cannot cope with anything vaguely foreign.
Great idea!
Paco Hope: my sentiments exactly.
I agree with Paco hope. its a CONCEPT. not a final plan, they can easily make it wheelchair accessible AND make changes for different population density’s of area’s inside ANY city. you people need to think about all the possibilities. and just because it won’t be in America, doesn’t mean it won’t have any success at all. and you’re not the designer. you need to look at it from an average person point of view. “i want to get to work on time” well this is a good answer. “i want to go somewhere without spending 20 odd dollars on a taxi, or being on a crowded bus” fair enough, this can DO IT. just sit back and think of the POSITIVE things. sure there are some things that need changing but just think. where i live (Melbourne Australia), they come out with new bus’s or trains all the time. they work better than the old ones and still serve it’s original purpose. they can always come out with new cost effective ideas that help everyone.
P.S really good concept. hope it gets accepted in every country, once it reaches its final design.
LINK
Excuse me, these could be a fine possibility. Add in a ramp and take out the back seat, leave the space so a guy can roll his wheel chair in there. Up the size a little and through in a small storage compartment and it’d be nearly perfect. The US does in fact have “lines” and “queues” EVERYWHERE has lines and queues, Patrick, you made yourself look like a complete idiot. Meters are another we have in the US, like a meter stick, or the other side of a ruler, or, and I know it’s amazing Zippy, we could convert the meters! Wow! That’s to you Patrick.
It is still a concept, and it is a PERSONAL transportation system not a system to pick you up after you have a bunch of bags or to take you along your shopping route. It’s not there to replace a car but to replace a bus.
Could we see a diagram of the entire system interconnections? Seems very complicated.
one cable vehicle for two seats… it seems
you cant bring any heavy luggage
It’s been ten years since Doug Malewicki first proposed Skytran, but in that time absolutely NOTHING has been done. They can’t even find the money to build a toy, yet alone a 50 foot demo system.
It seems that the specs have changed recently. The price has more than doubled and the speed reduced from 100 MPH to a mere 45 MPH (see unimodal.com)
This thing will never happen
The issues about cargo and disabled access are easily solved with this system. You could even have a docking system where a small battery-powered vehicle (or disabled persons wheelchair) would automatically be loaded into the pod, so you could carry heavy packages. You wouldn’t even need to own the vehicle, since it could drive itself back to the stop when it is done.
This is the ultimate system. It isn’t pie in the sky, The technology has finally arrived to do something that people would accept as public transportation, that doesn’t care about hills, that is esthetically attractive, and doesn’t cost anywhere near as much as roads and freeways.
“They look way too small for overweight people, and the steps with no elevators probably violate the Americans with Disabilities Act.”
Thats why its called a prototype. Do you have any idea how many drafts there are of a particular design before something is finalized?
Its a great idea, especially for city transport. The addition of “family cars” that could sit 4-5 could add to the beneficence.
Great place to take a shit & will look cool covered with graffiti.
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