Personal Mass Transit?

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the keep-to-yourself dept

More than three years ago, we wrote about the idea for a transit system called RUF, standing for “Rapid, Urban, Flexible”. It involved simple electric cars that could work as regular cars (with limitations) on regular roads, but could also hook up to a public transport system and zip you wherever you wanted to go. It was a cross between cars and public transportation. There was talk about setting up such a system in Europe. However, Americans don’t want to have to go out and buy an additional dinky electric car, so over here we came up with yet another transportation system named PERTS for Personal Electric Rapid Transit System – that would let you keep your existing car. However, when you wanted to travel longer distances, you would simply drive your car into a pod and program where you wanted to go. These sounded like great ideas, but it looks like we’re actually taking a step backwards with what is being looked into lately. Over in Minnesota, they’ve announced interest in setting up a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) monorail system. Basically, it’s a monorail with a bunch of separate cars on the tracks. You’d go to the station, get in an available car and tell it where to go. This seems a lot less useful than just using your own car as part of the system. It also seems fairly limiting if the PRT monorail system doesn’t go where you need it to go. Not everyone is happy about the system. They think it’s a waste of money and might be ugly. They’re probably right. The current system sounds like it’s only a tiny bit more useful than current mass transit systems in that you have a little bit more flexibility. However, it doesn’t have the same level of usefulness/flexibility as those earlier systems we described. The one area where this could be useful is in urban situations where cars are almost completely unnecessary – such as NYC. But, the subway system there is already pretty effective.