Another kindly reader, Evan Flink, has sent along some information about the Pod Car technology that indicates some success, he says:
“Currently, the British company ULtra is building a system at Heathrow to connect the parking lot with the new Terminal 5, and ultimately, to every terminal in the airport. This will be a true PRT system, with driverless cars & properly sized guideways.
“Here is a link to a picture at the ULtra website - just a week or so ago they had the first run of a production vehicle over the completed guideway.
“The Masdar City project in Dubai, touted to be the first carbon-neutral city, is designed to use PRT, Segways & walking for travel within the city, & Light Rail for inter-city travel. Projects are also in development in Uppsala, Sweden and Daventry, England, & a Request for Proposal was recently let in Santa Cruz.
“PRT is the first real innovation in public transit in 100 years & has the potential to do, when built out, what Light Rail & Busses cannot - get a large segment of the population out of their cars & onto transit.”
And this is what I also would agree on; that the public will not abandon their cars until they have a safe, relatively private system that has the capability to really get them around to where it is they need to go, which the Pod Car technology appears to have the capability to do.
Most folks do not feel that comfortable on the traditional forms of mass transit; they do not want to be screamed or leered at, groped, solicited for money, intimidated or otherwise discombobulated by the often unruly and inappropriate behavior of too many of our citizens on too many of our mass transit systems.
