Stuff You Should Know - How Personal Rapid Transport Works

Episode Date: July 7, 2008

Personal rapid transport combines the best traits of subways and taxis, and costs less to build than light rail. Could this be the future of transportation? Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast and learn more about personal rapid transport. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like, he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Brought to you by Consumer Guide Automotive. We make car buying easier. Hi and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, a staff writer here at HowStuffWorks.com. With me is the writer's editor extraordinaire, Mr. Chris Palette. How's it going, Chris? It's going great, Josh. Thanks for asking. So, Chris, I noticed you shaved your goatee. It's startlingly different. Yeah. Yeah, I'm not used to the air conditioning on my chin, but I'll

get used to it. Well, we're not used to it around the office. We're actually lamenting the loss of it. We're sitting shiva over Chris's goatee. We've got the mirrors covered, but we have to soldier on, don't we, Chris? Yeah. So, I'm thinking we can soldier on by talking about whether or not there's going to be a new kind of taxi cab in the future. What do you know about this? Well, I do know that gas prices are going up and people are looking at all kinds of alternatives, even something that might seem like it's right out of one of those 1940s, 1950s art deco. This is the wave of the future. Like Tomorrowland. The wedway people mover. Yeah. So, what we're talking about is personal rapid transit or PRT. And it's actually not a new idea. It does find its roots in the

50s. An American urban designer started toying with the idea. What it does is it takes the best of both worlds of subways and taxis and puts them together. It's personal rapid transit because there's so many cars on this rail line that you don't have to share with anybody. So, people who are unsettled by the homeless or are xenophobic to a clinical degree can rest easy on this ride. And it also takes you pretty much exactly where you want to go. Surprisingly, it's less to build than light rail by a long shot. They're doing one at Heathrow Airport in the infamous Terminal 5. And it costs about 16 million for a mile of track. Total costs. Most light rail costs about 40 million, which is amazing. It's got it beat by that. Why don't we have this

installed everywhere now? Well, I would guess that even though they're claiming that it is less expensive than light rail, that there's just so much more infrastructure involved in building a light rail system. From what I've read in researching for the podcast, the cars we're talking about here for these PRT systems are small. They're like a personal automobile rather than a big honking train, which I'm sure costs a lot to build. Plus, the track would probably need to be considerably wider for a light rail train. So, it sort of makes sense that it would be a little bit more cost efficient, even with the number of stops going up. But even with hard numbers, there's a lot of people who aren't swayed. Personal rapid transit

systems have found vocal opponents everywhere that they've been proposed. You watched The Simpsons, right? Oh, yeah. Okay. You've seen the monorail episode? It's one of my favorites. It is a great episode. It has Leonard Nimoy, Apossums. It's a spoof of the music man. But really, when I was researching Personal Rapid Transit, I realized that the monorail episode of The Simpsons is a subtle indictment of PRT systems. And while in the episode, Homer Simpson is the conductor of the monorail, what better metaphor for a failing computer system than Homer himself, right? That's true. Yeah. And that's one of the big criticisms of the PRT system is what happens if one of the cars fails. If you're on the same track as everyone else, and especially if they're

moving in as close proximity as it suggests that we will be, if we use these systems, it'll be essentially bumper to bumper. And they are unmanned. They are computerized. They're computer driven, which is good because they can run 24 hours a day. But if they're unmanned, then what happens when they stop? Like you said, you've got all the cars behind you stop behind you. It could be just a complete nightmare. It's like being stuck on a roller coaster, but you're not an amusement park. You're trying to get home or get to work. Maybe they'll install horns in them so that at least we can have the satisfaction of honking at the other cars. Right. Yeah. That'd be awesome, actually. But I was intrigued that they're being

installed in some places, I think Sweden and Abu Dhabi, which is sort of ironic considering that they would have gotten the money from that from oil. Yeah. Yeah. That is ironic. But they are starting to, they're actually the United Arab Emirates and Dubai and some of these other areas are really starting to leave the charge on going green. And the city called Mazdar City, it's a development outside of Abu Dhabi. They're aiming to become the first zero carbon footprint city ever. And part of that is the personal rapid transit system they're implementing. And this is not a test. I mean, they're putting in a whole 1500 stop system. So it's a huge deal. And there's going to be a lot of eyes on Abu Dhabi to find out if this can really work and if it will fail,

like people expect, or if it could be the wave of the future for taxis. That's fascinating. It'll be, it'll be exciting to see, you know, that this may be a real solution. Yeah. I hope so, because we're drowning here. If you want to learn more about personal rapid transit read, will there be a new kind of taxicab on howstuffworks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. Let us know what you think. Send an email to podcast at howstuffworks.com. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready. Are you? The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the new podcast, The Turning Room of Mirrors, we look beneath the delicate veneer of American ballet and the culture formed by its most influential figure, George Ballinger. He used to say, what are you looking at, dear? You can't see you, only I can see you. What you're doing is larger than yourself, almost like a religion. Like he was a god. Listen to The Turning Room of Mirrors on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.