
Startup Wants to Replace Cars and Subways with Elevated Pods - mpweiher
https://www.fastcompany.com/40568132/this-startup-wants-to-replace-cars-and-subways-with-elevated-solar-pods
======
nmeofthestate
"Solar Powered" \- why? Why not decouple this from power generation, put the
solar cells in the most efficient place, and just make this system electric
powered? Tracks will presumably be situated deep in urban canyons and in shade
for a lot of the time. Gotta crowbar in those green buzzwords.

~~~
timerol
In their handbook
([http://transitx.com/transitxhandbook.pdf](http://transitx.com/transitxhandbook.pdf)),
they admit that was purely for marketing. "If there is insufficient solar
energy available, Transit X will use other sources of sustainable energy."

------
djrogers
Wait a sec - it's solar powered and the posts hold the batteries, but the pods
have to charge? Also, the 100lb pods seat 5, but theay're barely big enough to
seat 2 people who are apparently carry little to nothing?

There's no way a 100lb pod contains batteries and a drive mechanism capable of
moving 5 people and their stuff up and down hills, so is the drive mechanism
in the tracks? If so, why would the pods need to be recharged?

Seems like a neat idea, but it's clearly vaporware if even the marketing stuff
is contradictory and/or impossible with today's tech.

~~~
timerol
They do claim specific numbers in their handbook
([http://transitx.com/transitxhandbook.pdf](http://transitx.com/transitxhandbook.pdf)):
20 lbs battery, 2 electric motors driving 4 15cm wheels, with a max load of
800 lbs. (4 adults or 8 children). Whether that's reasonable or not is up for
debate... My guess is that these pods need an extremely level track.

~~~
djrogers
20lbs of batteries leaves 80lbs for the rest of the structure and the motors -
a structure that is supposed to enclose and support 800 lbs? That seems very,
very optimistic. As does the 150MPH speed! 20lbs of current-tech batteries
would only provide enough power to run for a few minutes at those speeds..

~~~
jessaustin
Nobody wants to navigate 90° intersections at 40mph, let alone 150mph...

~~~
mozumder
Automan does:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA1NT4I0s34](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA1NT4I0s34)

------
leoedin
This seems a lot like the "Ultra PRT" pods which are currently installed at
London Heathrow.

[http://www.ultraglobalprt.com/how-it-works/ultra-
vehicle/](http://www.ultraglobalprt.com/how-it-works/ultra-vehicle/)

They're probably facing the same problems that face all infrastructure heavy
public transport projects - huge capex and very little money available for
this type of unproven project.

~~~
mrguyorama
Tom Scott gives a good overview of these and the ones at a University in West
Virginia:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSaWfw07Sw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSaWfw07Sw)

------
misterbwong
Serious question: Why can't we, at least on freeways, build (either
virtual/software based or physical/metal) rails into the road, and "self
drive" them autopia-style? It would allow us to retrofit all vehicles,
regardless of year made, would allow fully autonomous driving on freeways, and
would also solve the last mile problem of public transportation by allow cars
to simply drive that last mile as normal.

Is the infrastructure investment too high? Does this not scale?

~~~
rbranson
That doesn’t solve the traffic problem, which is what the company is
addressing.

~~~
everdev
It might help traffic because cars could move in tandem and follow closer
behind. I think exiting the highway and going from "rail mode" to "driving
mode" would be the trickiest part. I'd imagine you'd need some manual signal
from the driver to the rail system to confirm that the driver is sort and
ready to take back over.

------
Tiktaalik
Another company wasting its time reinventing the wheel.

We solved these issues in the 19th century.

Our transportation problems are political, not technological problems. The
problem is the lack of political will to fund and build public transportation
and active transportation systems instead of continuously expanding the road
network.

~~~
vinceguidry
It's becoming increasingly common to use "it's a political problem" as a
conversation-ender, as if political problems can't be worked on and solved.

We already have several examples of how political problems can be hacked on
and overcome. Uber's early days where they were busy opening up cities to the
idea of a competing taxi service.

There's also the traditional way, activism. Activism seems to work best
drumming up political support for social problems. Problems like this one tend
to respond well to large sums of money collected to fund a trial run. Find
just one city to try this out on.

Public transit's big problem is that it's been tried, and while it works, it
requires huge amounts of political capital to be created and spent on _each
expansion of the transit network_. A profit motive would allow this process to
expand at the rate of demand.

But so far, transit is akin to utilities in that there's a real public
interest in keeping prices down. Plus the transit agenda can get weirdly
partisan. Here in Atlanta, the majority-white northern suburbs did not want
MARTA train stations going too deeply northward. The pejorative expansion of
the acronym was "Moving Africans rapidly through Atlanta."

So we need more Ubers in the world, companies that are not afraid to challenge
political institutions in order to drive the public interest forward. The
profit motive is needed in order to drive expansion, and the legal regime
needs to be flexible enough to get around NIMBY naysayers.

~~~
bobthepanda
But the political problem is that you need far more money to build transit
than can be achieved with VC money. Unless a startup has managed to somehow
reduce the cost of right-of-way acquisition it's not a solution that keeps the
cost of developing transit down.

There was a model that worked; transit has historically been used to allow
property development. This was used in the development of London, Hong Kong,
Tokyo, New York, and the multitudes of inner-ring streetcar suburbs in
American metropolitan areas. The problem is that whereas Hong Kong and Tokyo
held onto the properties, Western companies that used this model tended to
just sell off the property, requiring Ponzi-scheme levels of land acquisition.
That collapsed when they ran out of money and the federal government started
building free interstates to goose the suburb-building instead. And now in
2018 there's very little cheap farmland within sane rail commuting distance of
metro areas, and the model doesn't work in places like New York where a block
of property acquisition is equivalent to building an entire train line. Even
Tokyo has stopped building new railways using this model because it just does
not scale.

~~~
vinceguidry
My understanding is that the problem with transit isn't just a resource
problem, you literally need the power of the state to invoke eminent domain in
order to build the infrastructure, making it a purely political problem that
can only be solved by using political channels.

And the model you list is still in use today, if you take into account that
roads are also 'transit'. It's just not the kind of transit that you and I
want to see implemented.

~~~
bobthepanda
Well roads are not built privately. And we're starting to see what happened
with the earlier streetcar model, where the one-off revenue from property
development is not enough to pay for the infrastructure in perpetuity.

The eminent domain thing is a power of the state, but it's also true that even
if you were to privatize railroads today, they could not afford to purchase
all the required property for new lines at fair market value. Hence the
dependence on the government to front that cost instead.

------
lachdoug
Germany's Cabinentaxi was the first on-demand rapid personal transit system.
They may not have solved the personal transport problem, but they built an
impressive test track and made a great promo video:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERdF0FK-2io](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERdF0FK-2io)

------
blang
Isn't a company called SkyTran trying to do the same thing?

~~~
magduf
Basically, yes, except that SkyTran has been around for many years (since the
90s I think), and their system uses elevated maglev rails, not wheels (wheels
are used at low speeds). Unfortunately, SkyTran hasn't gotten too far either;
they're supposedly building a test track in Tel Aviv that will be finished in
2015...

This company looks like total vaporware stealing the SkyTran concept.

------
joveian
There was one of these companies in Minnesota for three decades, but it looks
like it dissolved earlier this year:

[https://finance-commerce.com/2018/04/the-transit-
revolution-...](https://finance-commerce.com/2018/04/the-transit-revolution-
that-wasnt/)

(They never actually built a real system, though).

------
svalorzen
Some years ago a similar company called Shweeb was doing the same thing with
human powered pods. They got $1M from Google as a grant and then disappeared.
I was disappointed because I really see myself using this kind of
transportation, here's hoping they make it.

------
homerowilson
compare with the cool vintage Morgantown PRT:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Tr...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Transit)

------
at-fates-hands
Anybody else read this part:

 _" The support poles will hold large batteries; the pods will park where
energy is available and charge while parked."_

And think, "Wow, this is going to be a huge recycling issue."

------
pavel_lishin
> _“People don’t like to wait,” says Mike Stanley, CEO of Transit X._

It's true, which is why this system would likely fail in New York. How long
are you going to wait for a five-person pod to take you uptown, when you're
waiting in line with all these people:
[https://i.redd.it/dmrfzu0dl3y01.jpg](https://i.redd.it/dmrfzu0dl3y01.jpg)

~~~
RandallBrown
One of my coworkers is in that photo. Is that yesterday?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Small world! Yup, as a result of the storm.

------
eisen
I would love to see this be pitched to an american city.

Response: 25% of americans won’t be able to fit in this...

~~~
chiph
There's a group of wealthy people in Austin proposing a Heathrow Pod-like
system. I'm skeptical that it can handle the large surge of passengers from a
large music venue or Circuit of the Americas.

------
pascalxus
If i was still living in the City, i know I would want this.

------
fluxsauce
A modern monorail? Literally, looking at the mockup imagery.

This is personal transit, not mass transit and I don't see it solving problems
in major metropolitan areas.

~~~
JBReefer
I don't think anyone wants to solve the hard problems of mass transit, I think
people are looking for cheap workarounds. Everyone wants to start the next
Uber, and this is a major unsolved problem. However, the history of failed
private transportation ideas is really interesting, and really detrimental to
the stuff that actually works: walkable areas, biking, trains, buses, etc.

Hell, there's a suburb outside of Miami that just vetoed a rail project
because "self driving cars are right around the corner!" which sure sounds
like the flying car predictions of the 50s-70s.

~~~
magduf
Trains and buses don't really work unless your density is extremely high. Not
everyone wants to go between the same small set of points along a linear
route. This is one reason why cars are much more efficient for many routes.

Personal Rapid Transit offers the decentralized nature of cars, but eliminated
many of its problems: having to stop at stoplights, the limitations of human
drivers, etc. It can't handle huge masses of people the way a train can, but
for suburban use it would really be a lot better than cars, and it would also
be a much better option for higher-paying passengers than traditional cabs or
Uber/Lyft.

