tandempower

Walking distance is how far people can walk without getting too sweaty when it's hot and without using too much of their break-time to get to their destination. E.g. people who drive somewhere to get food during their lunch break have a certain amount of time they allot to driving there and back. This same amount of time could be used to walk if there is someplace to go within 'walking distance.' At @3mph, most people don't have time to walk a few miles during a lunch break, even if they have the stamina to walk that far.



Anything that can carry people can carry freight, no? Why couldn't trucks be converted to run on PRT tracks? The main benefit of PRT seems to be the use of rails to eliminate the need for tires and the energy-waste caused by road-tire friction.

You'd have to sell it to Detroit as an expansion of the auto-industry rather than a departure from it. There is a lot of pride driving Detroit and car culture in general. If Detroit can add a rail-auto business to its mix in a way it can be proud of, PRT will face less ideological opposition and undermining than if it's construed as another threat to the automotive industry. It would be great if Americans were disciplined in accepting market freedom but in practice, they emotionally react in support or or in opposition to industries based on pride, identity, etc.

I'm afraid the current lull in cycling and transit growth has to do with a backlash against non-automotive transportation fueled by auto-industry marketing of automotivism as something patriotic and other forms of transportation as a threat to automotivism. All it takes is paying big $$$ for TV-ads showing romanticized imagery of 20th century America and getting Bob Dylan to voice over the phrase, "what's more American than America?" The implication is "we are what we were and if we grow away from automotivism, we'll be less of what we were/are so we better avoid doing anything besides driving."

It's hard to explain that more alternative transportation makes driving better for those who drive, not worse. In the minds of many, if they see growth in other forms of transportation, they fear losing the competition and seeing automotivism disappear completely. In Freudian psychoanalysis I think it's called "castration anxiety." It's super irritating because driving is not going away any time soon and it will actually survive a lot longer and healthier if a significant proportion of populations shift to transit and cycling and thus clear the roads for those who continue driving.

dwbstr

I hadn't thought of that for freight. Railroads already have a few trucks something like that. That's another way for freight to cross the system boundary without an extra handling. Anything larger than a local delivery truck, that would likely operate entirely within the system and thus be pure PRT, might not mix smoothly with regular PRT cars. On the other hand, if semi sized OTR/PRT trucks stayed mostly on highways and arterial roads, which would be less used by PRT than before PRT, that might work well enough.

I know it sounds like I must have drunk the PRT koolade, but I think it's just my nerd nature enjoying the rush of imagining the PRT world.

Yes, the auto industry and their allies oil, since power plants are less tied to oil than the motor vehicle fleet is, and insurance and finance and others who make a living from cars, are tough to fight.

tandempower

You avoid taking a realistic approach to implementation. Idk if you're aware of it but there exists this ideological tactic for status-quo dominance where any and all alternatives are reduced to pie-in-the-sky utopian ideals, because those are easier to discredit simply because there is no practical progress to be made in that direction from current realities.

In principle, any new or existing technology is free to initiate pilot projects within receptive areas. That is why I suggested an abandoned area of a city such as Detroit, where people are eager for factory work. Billing the PRT system as a form of cars-on-rails would help garner support as a reinvigoration of Detroit's traditional automotive industry. The key is that we want US auto industries to survive and prosper, only to do so the standards for #persons /vehicle need to go up. Rails vs. tires is not as important as reducing the sheer number of vehicles on the roads as population continues to grow. We seriously need to avoid reaching the point where personal auto driving reaches its limits. If that occurs, population reduction pressures aren't going to result in happy live-and-let-live everyday culture (as if there's much of that left at this point anyway).

There shouldn't even be any 'fight' to it in a free market. No one seems to remember the concept of freedom. Since when are we all supposed to be slaves to the business interests and market dominance of businesses and industries? Did I miss a constitutional amendment passing?

I-Like-To-Bike

Ideological opposition to the PRT scheme? PRT construed as a threat to any industry? Perhaps in the same pipe dreams of those who take this sort of doodling as a serious proposal.

Really, who takes this proposal seriously enough to be threatened by it or ideologically opposed to it? Is there any government agency that showed the slightest interest, any organization of any stripe, business enterprise or individual willing to invest any of their own funds, any venture capitalists; anybody, anywhere? That is the free market speaking in the clearest manner on the viability of the PRT scheme.

Roody

By the time PRT is developed (if it ever is) there will be no need for it to be on rails. There would be little autonomous cars operating on paved streets, similar to what Google is getting ready to start up.

I-Like-To-Bike

By the time the PRT scheme is developed, there will be no need for rails or paved streets since everyone will have their personal rocket ship to transport themselves from here to there.

Roody

tandempower

Calling an idea unrealistic isn't a constructive criticism of it. Constructive criticism is what moves otherwise unrealistic ideas toward practicality. What reactive-realists like you do is withhold constructive criticism for the sake of keeping as many new ideas off the table as possible. It's mind-numbing. If someone is interested in an otherwise seemingly unrealistic idea like PRT, why do you have assert the very negative and entirely uncreative opinion that it's unworthy of constructive criticism because no one has, as yet, shown investment interest? How do you think ANY new idea reaches the point of garnering investment interest except by going through a (potentially long) process of constructive criticism and refinement?

dwbstr

Comparing the various possible approaches to our traffic problems would make an interesting if complex and speculative cost/benefit analysis. Then again, since we arrived at the automobile dominated status quo in the face of the availability, in many places, of public transit, it demonstrates that the public has been willing to pay an enormous price in money and lives for a little more privacy and a little more freedom to go where they want when they want. Over the years the corporate world's few small attempts to address the problems failed mostly because they attempted to work around the status quo rather than take it head on. All their efforts to make an autonomous car have produced so far are a few airport shuttles. The decline of young drivers and the success of Uber may mean the times are changing and the public is willing to look less at those things and more at the bottom line.

It would be interesting to see an analysis that included cost and benefits over at least ten years and compared the status quo, PRT, existing public transit, self driving cars with segregated areas and non-segregated , with and without private ownership. I wouldn't be surprised to find that in large areas PRT still handily beat out the others by the end. That sounds like a job for their designers.

If the efficiency and safety advantages of PRT are simple physics, the questions remaining about them in my mind are about simple physics too. Will the switches described work in adverse conditions? Can the drastically lighter cars ride be smooth and quiet? That depends some on the design of the rails, which promise to be quite different from conventional rails, as well as the cars. We've had over a century to make rubber on pavement approach the efficiency of steel on steel and haven't yet. The trade offs would have killed it. On the other hand conventional rail has had much longer to design a joint that doesn't give a slight jolt and loud clickety clack when wheels goes over it. Why didn't they?

enigmaT120

It's easy. Solutions are harder.

tandempower

Excellent point; well-stated. The problem is exactly that personal automobile driving is a premium privilege and that, nevertheless, almost everyone aspires to having that same privilege.

It would be like having so many people eat out for every meal that it became impossible to get groceries to cook at home; where the more people eat in restaurants, the worse the quality of the food, the ambience, the service, the wait, etc. get. And then when people start wanting to cook at home to avoid bad experiences in restaurants, they have trouble getting decent ingredients because restaurants dominate the supply-chain.

tandempower

I don't think it was sarcasm. I think he means that people will commute directly from their homes to outer space workplaces in vehicles like Space X's new rocket that can land and re-launch.

erbfarm

I used to live in Boston and the light rail system there was terrific. Everybody used it. Sure parking and driving in Boston is a nightmare and car ownership is expensive but the public transpo system is really great and I never felt as if I couldn't get where I needed to go. I've lived in a few other cities since then and the public transpo has been, in comparison, bad. As a woman, I wouldn't feel safe waiting at a bus stop after dark in a lot of places. I also notice quite a few inebriated people on the bus when I take it (better than having them behind the wheel of course). I kind of think the Uber and the Google driverless car is going to make the whole public transpo debate moot. Without massive $$$ investment it will never be as frequent, pleasant, fast, and inexpensive as we want it to be. And I don't think we're in a climate where people will be willing to pay more taxes to do something "in the public good". I think that era is over, actually.