Originally Posted by
tandempower
If Mumbai adopts this system and sets an example for the world, great! In the mean time, I think there are other ways to stimulate an increase in public transit utilization that don't boil down to an all-or-nothing replacement of all personal automobiles with something else.
What this kind of all-or-nothing proposal essentially says is that if people aren't willing to get extremely radical with change, there is no other option so they might as well just not change anything at all. There doesn't need to be a revolution. Just a growing segment of public transit usage and bicycling.
I don't think there is much danger of the people or city planners taking the PRT or similar proposals seriously unless they are forced to. Given the public's love of the automobile, they would really want something less radical to work.
That said, someplace like Mumbai would be the severest possible test of a radical car free public transit system. I gather the main reason for India's very many traffic fatalities is with their high population density , including very many pedestrians and cyclists, and less infrastructure there is much competition for road space and not so much compliance with traffic laws. People just walk, ride and drive more assertively there. I may be wrong. That's just the impression I get. They might be more willing to try such a system because they have already accepted public transit much more than we have. In fact, conventional public transit there may have reached it's practical limits. The problem is, with their collision avoidance radar and computers programmed not to drive assertively, the automated streetcars may lose the competition for the roads and be slowed to a crawl.