Ithacan Podcars
Update: According to commenters, Ithaca is not actually anywhere close to building this system. The concept remains interesting, nonetheless.
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Good read on CNN today…
Ithica NY is planning to build a system of “podcars” to whisk people about the town and the two campuses surrounding it (Cornell, Ithaca College). The concept is called “Personal Rapid Transit” or PRT.
This idea has been around a while. This version is being advanced by Advanced Transportation Systems, out of the UK. Another company interested in doing this, Taxi2000 (based in Minneapolis), has a pretty sweet web page illustrating the idea.
The concept has merit. Basically it combines the “creature comforts” of a personal automobile, the efficiency of rail based transportation, and most of the flexibility of a non-linear system like a bus.
The biggest problem for proponents of this idea is that it also marries many of the major drawbacks. The capacity of the system is low like automobile networks, the system gets you close (but not to the door) like bus networks, and the cost is high like rail networks.
For those reasons I’m skeptical that it will gain much momentum.
A better concept is being developed by American Maglev (out of Atlanta), which basically is a PRT-like system using larger cars and more regular routes. Using a unique set of technologies they’re keeping the cost down below light-rail figures, and the speed and capacity are extremely high.
That concept has better chances, I think, and is something I intend to write more about (and its applications for Houston) in the future.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: Advanced Transport Systems, American Maglev, AMT, Houston, infrastructure, Ithaca, Podcar, PRT, Taxi2000, transit, transportation
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Ithaca is not planning to build a podcar system. The CNN article has quotes from a few people and makes it sound like we are ready to go. No serious discussion of podcars has occurred and when it does I think that it will become clear that, as a poster to the Ithaca Journal wrote some months ago, “this is a massively stupid idea.” For one thing Ithaca is a city of but 30,000 people. (It does not balloon to 80,000 when the students are in town). Our streets are 19th century roads too narrow even for automobiles to move without dodging around oncoming traffic. So the only way to build a podcar system would be to have elevated tracks – the cost is going to be beyond anything we can afford. We can barely keep our existing streets in repair and our property taxes are already very high. For far less money and effort we could expand our local bus system (TCAT) and build park and ride locations for those commuting into Cornell and Ithaca college from outside the city.
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Ithacan, you miss the point that narrow streets are precisely why podcars would be a good idea. Podcar systems move the traffic up away from the streets, and therefore those narrow streets become less congested and more accessible for humans. An elevated ULTra guideway requires a single 3ft diameter support post every 50 feet, and for that you get nearly the capacity of a freeway lane moving above the street.
Sure, you can expand the bus service for less up-front capital, but operational costs of buses are much greater than podcars, especially if buses run at high service frequencies. Buses are also dirtier than podcars.
Most analyses show that podcars can be profitable in the long term with $1-2 fares, even accounting for capital costs. And that’s while providing much better service than buses (24×7 service, fast, accessible, point-to-point, non-stop, private). And, podcars would be 2-3 times more energy efficient than buses (per passenger), and would not spew exhaust into the city core.
What is “massively stupid” about something that is faster, more efficient, more convenient, and, in the long run, cheaper?
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I attended West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV, from 1977 to 1981. That’s where the original PRT system was built in the mid 1970s and is still operating quite efficiently today. There are even plans to expand it.
The fact that NO other cities have invested in similar transportation systems after all this time is shameful. Yes, it requires investment to build elevated tracks and stations. But as Morgantown has shown for over 30 years, the investment pays off.
There’s a great Wikipedia article about the system here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Transit
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Thanks for the comments, I’ve updated the header of this post to reflect the discussion!
Chuck, I have to agree, more cities should be investing in innovative technologies, especially when they’ve been proven to work. Thanks for the link, that’s new information for me!
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Andrew, you might also be interested in Masdar City, in the Middle East. That’s a car-free city being built around podcars from the ground up. It aims to be carbon-neutral. See:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90042092
PRT (aka podcars) has been around for a very long time, but recent developments have generated a lot of excitement. I first learned about it a few years ago and I’ve followed its progress closely.