Masdar City personal rapid transit designer talks transport
The zero-carbon and zero-waste Masdar City currently under construction in Abu Dhabi will also be car-free, so how will one get about the one-mile square town of 50,000? If you want to travel on the surface you can walk, bicycle or ride a Segway but if it's
The designer of the system is Dr. Luca Guala who, as a panelist for a forum at SAE 2009 called "Green Mobility - The Long View," spoke about the transit system, explaining how it will work and its advantages. Green Car Congress not only covered this event in a great post, but also did a little Q&A follow up with Mr. Guala that's well worth the read if this concept interests you. Although the whole city won't be completed until 2015, you should be able to take a robot taxi around the first part of the network connecting the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology (MIST) later this year.
[Source: Green Car Congress]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andy 6:50PM (4/29/2009)
I will be interested to see the results of this experiment.
I can't help but find it a little ironic though that the whole thing is funded by a nation built pretty much entirely on oil wealth.
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sidewinder 10:14PM (4/29/2009)
only 1 mile square, eh? hardly a worthy challenge for a PRT system - still, nice to see it getting built.
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EV-1 10:00PM (4/29/2009)
Wow !
That's _exactly_ my now 30 year old vision of transport and communication in densely built areas ....
My thoughts ignited by impatience on the battery issue - back then lead-acid or mercury - so the idea was a cross-fertilization between trains and autos, running on electric power from the grid.
This is exciting !
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Andy 3:22AM (4/30/2009)
I don't think your alone with that kind of vision.
Modular 5 mile radius metropolitan areas built around a high speed rail hub. All transport within city bounds using 25mph electric vehicles.
All industrial zones within 2 miles of rail freight terminal. Electric dray trucks. Local deliveries on standard 5 ton wheelbase.
Now just make me king of the world !... Muuua haa haa
kagiso 1:38PM (4/30/2009)
Pods are definitely the way forward, but burying them underground is to entirely defeat their advantages. Put them above ground (eg Ultra at Heathrow) and the capital costs are tiny, and the network can be flexibly expanded as required.
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