That looks horrible. Cramped, the giant windows means it’s hot and the sun is always in your eyes… Any reason they need to only use one rail? We already have road & rail buses, trucks, etc…just use those.
This is a prototype so it has the mechanism so it doesn’t fall over if the prototype fails. The actual production version won’t have that. It’s also running at low speed for the same reason.
I think “Draisy” is faster on the track and a much more realistic project. But “Monocab” is a University project, so it’s ok for me that a few millions are invested there.
Yes, this looks much better. My other thought would be road-rail buses, but getting on/off the tracks might be too much work to be worth the extra flexibility.
I’ve seen one of those in Japan. Even they admit that the only reason they continue to run it is for the novelty factor, it’s apparently quite expensive to keep going and not really that efficient.
It takes a good while to convert between the two modes since you have to be really careful you don’t misalign the thing and result in a derail. So it’s done, very, very, slowly.
FUCKING DOING OUR JOB AS TRANSPORT MODELLERS AND DOING A FUCKING COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS THAT SHOWS YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO GET FUCKING MODE SHIFT FROM RURAL USERS UNLESS YOU RUN A FUCKING METRO STYLE 10 MINUTELY SERVICE WHICH IS FUCKING UNFEASIBLE WITH THE FUCKING RESOURCES WE HAVE AVAILABLE.
IN THE FUCKING UK WE HAVE A LARGE NUMBER OF FUCKING ABANDONED RAILWAYS FROM THE PERIOD OF FUCKING COAL MINING THAT WOULDN’T HAVE ANYWHERE NEAR THE FUCKING DEMAND NECESSARY TO JUSTIFY SETTING UP AN EXPENSIVE AS FUCK SIGNALLING SYSTEM TO BRING THEM UP TO MODERN FUCKING SAFETY STANDARDS, ALONGSIDE REPLACING THE FUCKING RAILS, SLEEPERS AND BEDS.
IF INSTEAD YOU CAN HAVE A FUCKING PUBLICALLY OWNED FLEET OF FUCKING ELECTRIC ‘MINI TRAINS’ THAT PEOPLE COULD USE FOR INFREQUENT BUT NECESSARY TRIPS, THAT COULD REMOVE A FUCKING SIGNIFICANT BARRIER TO MODE SHIFT, WHICH WOULD BE PRETTY FUCKING RAD
Read the article, that’s literally the first thing they explain
Besides which, it’s very obviously a train if you just look at it. It’s a small monorail train specifically designed for this purpose using existing infrastructure.
These pods are only used on rails with very low ridership. They would switch to a train if ridership increased.
Look at it this way: you can have a train that has a capacity of 100 people, but it only runs once a day due to the low demand, and only 2 people want to ride it at that time of day…Or you can have 10 pods, which do not require as much railway maintenance, and they can carry the 10 people who actually want to use this railway, completely on demand.
Yeah, a train is better if you want to move ten thousand people a day at peak hour. But this is a cheaper way to move ten people at different times across a day. And it’s a cheaper way of inducing the demand that would justify the more efficient kind of expansion.
Isn’t it better to have a train that runs when you want rather than having to wait potentially hours for the scheduled commuter train. Isn’t this better?
Trains suck if you don’t have frequency, and because of the population density with a good frequency more than half of the trains will be completely empty and the rest almost empty.
If you out half the funding from car infrastructure instead into train and bus infrastructure this would not be a problem. Induced demand works both ways.
Look up “interurban railways”. Most towns east of the Mississippi used to have frequent rail service with whistle stops at every farm and crossroads. In addition to passengers these railroads also transported the harvest, Sears purchases, kit houses, even hearses!
This almost certainly wouldn’t work in the United States but it does in Europe because Europe has loads of these tiny abandoned rail lines (often single track) that were built in the 1800s and then abandoned. They don’t go anywhere particularly densely populated, you know because of the industrial Revolution causing everyone to move to the cities, so there isn’t the demand for a full rail service. Meaning they’re not going to spend the money upgrading the infrastructure to modern standards.
This means they can be used at relatively cheap cost. As long as the tracks are still physically present all they need to do is cut some weeds down and put these things on the line and they’re good to go. It’s a cheap project that a local municipal authority can handle without having to involve wider government.
Even with unlimited funding, you want to scale the size of the train to the population that could potentially ride on it.
A P42 locomotive pulling 7 Amtrak superliner cars is 700 tons of steel getting 0.4 miles per gallon of diesel. That’s a crapton of mining and drilling and CO2, and it would be incredibly wasteful if it ended up carrying, like, two people at a time.
I’m cautiously optimistic about this, it seems like an okay idea and the fact that they have vehicles working on a test track IRL means it’s at least not an obvious scam like hyperloop.
Also the fact that they have a specific use case in mind, don’t say it’s going to revolutionize all transportation, and are reusing existing infrastructure, all bode well.
The problem is that the wheels have flanges on both sides, so I don’t think switches work.
The best solution would be a loop connecting the rails at each end, but that’s obviously not compatible with running regular freight trains since it would need to be switchless.
Thus presumably they need to be externally flipped around and moved, for which I’d guess a crane like those used for moving containers on and off trains is ideal.
With a crane they could also easily move the vehicles to a storage area so freight trains can pass through.
I could imagine an autonomous, on-demand rural train service. Due to the low expected traffic, it seems like you could just build some additional sidings and use a more conventional design.
If someone was willing to invest into building and maintaining infrastructure there would be no need for this concept, but that’s a political issue. The idea of this concept is do make the best of what you have.
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