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Please let me address some of the good questions and comments:
SkyTran is different than any other PRT. Traditional, old PRT, indeed has problems: Expensive, big foot print, lots of concrete and big footprint, mechanical parts, high maintenance costs, moves on wheel limited to 40MPH...
SkyTran is not mechanical. We ride on an air cushion, not on wheels. We use a small guideway and we take up virtually no real estate, no footprint (we ride on lampposts on sidewalks!). We withstand the weather and our guideway can take the cold and the heat. We use very little electricity. We are clean energy and actually add power to the smart grid.
So it should be no surprise that old, 20th Century PRT has not gained a foot-holdd. It offers very little if anything over traditional rail. SkyTran is quite different than that.
If you go to the Detroit Free Press article about SkyTran from last Sunday, you can link to a TV segment about SkyTran.
We ask only that you keep an open mind before turning your back on this important technology. Traffic congestion is killing America's productivity.
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Then give us some details about the technology. Don't tell us what it can do, tell us how it does it.
- Passive maglev: technical details? We're all engineers here, I'd like to see the details. At a minimum, operating characteristics.
- Pod weight and capacity. Don't tell me it's light, tell me how light. Show me a structural detail for a pole that you'd find adequate, and tell me support spacing.
- Utility poles, really? Back to pod weight.
- You claim on-demand travel. Well, let's go with a unidirectional peak hour travel capacity of 4,500 people/hr for light rail with 3-car consists (similar to 3-lanes of highway, which you claim to be able to match). If it's on-demand travel, how many pods do you estimate needing to operate a line. Where's your modeling, I'd like to see it.
- Continuing, 4,500 people, that's over 2,000 pods. So back to how light these are, and the structures needed.
- I'd like to see your flow model too. Headways, accel/decel times, station dwell times, and how much passing track is needed at stations. That'll depend on velocity, but at the speeds you're touting, I don't see how that wouldn't require 4 guideways with station spacing <1 mile.
- Back to the technology. You claim to be able to move 4,500 people/hour each direction, and generate electricity. How? Show me the technology. At least a brief write up on where the energy generation comes from, and how much energy is used to power the thing under different operating conditions.
- Emergency access/egress?
I'm sure there's more. That's a 2-minute wag at asking questions.
To please the skeptics, you'll need to tell us things we don't already know. "Traffic congestion is killing America." That's news. Details. That's where the devil hides.