Filed under: Emerging Technologies, EV/Plug-in, Transportation Alternatives, Lightweight
Videos: London's Heathrow airport to use driver-less, electric POD transport system
According to the Reuters video above, London's Heathrow Airport will use electrically-powered, driver-less pods to transport passengers from Terminal Five, which should open in 2008, to the business car park. The biggest selling point of this small vehicle system is the cars are queued up on-demand, so the wait time is just 12 seconds. The electric cars, which only go 25 MPH, drive on 1.5 meter wide dedicated paths and have possible applications in office parks and cities. Below the fold is another video all about the personal transport system.If you think you seen this system before, you might have in a James Bond movie or two. Also below the fold is a video of fictional Bond villain SPECTRE's personal transport system.
Related:
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- Video of "naked streets" and how banning stop lights will save gas
- A Prius that needs no driver enters the DARPA challenge
- Video: Car-free city coming 2009
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dave 2:40PM (12/19/2007)
This is known as PRT - Personal Rapid Transit - and well implemented it could have an enormous effect on transportation impacts and efficiency. Kudos to the people who are bringing this to life in London.
And Bond villains always had great toys too didn't they?
- Dave
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Lascelles Linton 3:07PM (12/19/2007)
Dave, The video also called it Ultra. The other video is really a monorail and includes clips from the Incredibles. Both were probably inspired by Utopian visions from the 50's which is apart of the Disney article under Related.
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steven 3:44PM (12/19/2007)
They forgot to post the tube scene from the Polar Express, but I think they are powered the same way the drive up banking tubs are powered. Just built on a "elf" scale instead. Let's not forget those grandiose dreams of the days leading up to the Detroit People Mover!
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Lascelles Linton 4:53PM (12/19/2007)
Steven, Do you mean the one with the fog? That's just trippy now :D
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLh_mV8TgJE
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Domenick 6:32PM (12/19/2007)
My wife says they are cute.
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Ernie 7:56PM (12/19/2007)
Hmm. Okay. Aside from the short wait times, I have to wonder what the big deal is. Around here, we call that Skytrain. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SkyTrain_%28Vancouver%29)
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Dave 1:22PM (12/20/2007)
Lascelles,
Honestly I skipped the video, but I read about this last year when I wrote a paper on the future of transportation for my transport policy class.
PRT is the generic name, ULTra is a brand name. There are a few visions out there for this technology, like PRT2000.
And PRT actually already exists, but not in its best form. There is a PRT system installed in Morgantown, WV at UVA - although the story is the engineers totally mangled the concept in their implementation (check out Transportation Renaissance by Rydell, I think that's where I read about that).
There was also a system that was tested in Germany, was going to be installed in Hamburg, and then the money dried up suddenly. It was called CabinTaxi, it was tested, but only exists as a one-way shuttle between two buildings today (if that's not old news).
And on, and on... its great to see London is taking a chance and installing this at Heathrow.
- Dave
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Dave 1:23PM (12/20/2007)
Ernie -
It isn't really the same thing, mostly because the vehicles will only hold a few people. The concept behind PRT is that the smaller vehicles are more adept at utilizing more weblike networks of track than the larger ones.
For example, if you had a PRT system in your area, you could get on by your house, and travel to any station on the network as directly as the tracks allow, without waiting for a train to come, or other vehicles to load or unload.
That is the vision anyway. You get on, you tell it where to go, pay your dime, and that's it. The stations are all on sidings, so you pass right by them on the way to your personal destination.
By reducing wait times and getting away from the linear train-route model, more people will be able too use the system and keep their cars off of the road.
The airport parking to terminal link is just the beginning.
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Lascelles Linton 9:07AM (12/21/2007)
Dave, You are probably right about PRT being the general name for the system but I did not want to risk using a trademark. There are a lot of these...
http://www.smartskyways.com/Technology/Compare/compare.html
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Dave 1:02PM (12/22/2007)
Thanks for the link to all the great PRT sites. I wish I had seen this aggregation a year ago when I was writing my paper, would've made life a lot easier.
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