After my post last week about the tube freight system I have been keeping an eye on similar self-guided vehicles in the news.
Heathrow airport has had a system in development for some years to move people around between terminals. hotels and
carparks. The difference between a
PRT and normal mass transit is that people have their own vehicle. And the difference between than and a normal car is that the vehicle operates on a network that offers more services than, for instance, a road. These services include automated driving, propulsion and in a 'sci
fi' look into the future multiple configurations of vehicle - transport as a service.
As
this blogger covering a similar concept points out, this is kind of like a computer network in which individual packets traverse a network in a semi autonomous yet organised fashion. People will argue that a traditional car fleet and road network is exactly that, but there are lots of ways it could be improved:
- Car sharing could be greatly increased if the network knows where cars are and where they are going
- Cars 50m apart each with rubber wheels are not efficient, it would make sense at the least that cars draft each other like cyclists in the Tour de France. Or your car navigates to a train track or similar for long distance travel
- Intelligent navigation could avoid congestion and spread traffic load more efficiently than human drivers