SkyTran offers Detroit new idea for mass transit

**Bham1982** · December-30-11, 01:44 PM

Low capacity, high cost transit. Worst of both worlds.

**leady106** · December-30-11, 02:50 PM

If is it realy no cost to the City, I would have run the line from Motorcity Casino to Rosa Parks Transit Center along Grand River then turn on Michigan Ave toward MGM. This would connect the other two Casinos to the People Mover and the Casinos can with the operational cost.Then all three casinos should help run the People Mover during off peak hours.

**Wesley Mouch** · January-01-12, 07:50 PM

Originally Posted by wolverine

This needs to stop being posted

Naw. Good ideas just keep resurfacing -- if you look beyond your prejudices, many things become possible.

**Detroitnerd** · January-02-12, 10:00 AM

If BRT really is LRT with rubber instead of rails, then PRT is just BRT without buses! And all free! Free! Call L. Brooks Patterson!

**professorscott** · January-02-12, 11:36 AM

PRT is a transit system that lives on web sites and in the imagination, and those seem to be its permanent homes.

Find me one example anywhere of where this is actually built and functioning as described. No, not Morgantown WV; that is nothing more than a Detroit style People Mover. No, not in any airport anywhere; that's not a regional transit system nor any part of one.

Find me a system with small-capacity vehicles that pull off a main transitway onto spur tracks to load and discharge passengers. Anywhere in the world! Then and only then will I believe this is even remotely feasible. As it is, the cost projections are a joke. A several mile long series of complicated bridges is cheaper than building something at grade? Suggest that to any civil engineer and see if he can keep a straight face.

Great ideas are always welcome here, but wildly impractical ideas that distract from the possible and necessary are not helpful.

**Wesley Mouch** · January-02-12, 04:15 PM

Originally Posted by professorscott

PRT is a transit system that lives on web sites and in the imagination, and those seem to be its permanent homes.

Find me one example anywhere of where this is actually built and functioning as described. No, not Morgantown WV; that is nothing more than a Detroit style People Mover. No, not in any airport anywhere; that's not a regional transit system nor any part of one.

Find me a system with small-capacity vehicles that pull off a main transitway onto spur tracks to load and discharge passengers. Anywhere in the world! Then and only then will I believe this is even remotely feasible. As it is, the cost projections are a joke. A several mile long series of complicated bridges is cheaper than building something at grade? Suggest that to any civil engineer and see if he can keep a straight face.

Great ideas are always welcome here, but wildly impractical ideas that distract from the possible and necessary are not helpful.

I'd suggest that this is getting pretty close, if you remove even the need for 'rails'...

Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard. They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. Source [[over year old): http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/...riving-at.html

There are some pretty big changes coming in transit in general in the future. And you may be right that investing in PRT is misguided. Perhaps we're not looking far enough into the future.

We are building thousands of elevators for individuals with disabilities. In a few years, it'll be cheaper to buy every single person who can't walk a device to climb stairs instead -- at much less social cost.

Perhaps LR or BRT or even PRT is not progressive enough.

While I'm at it, here's a new approach that provides something like BRT or LRT without [[much) diesel exhaust or overhead wires... from Germany! It must be good. http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678554/a...id-coming-soon

So don't lock you mind down that LRT is the only solution to transit. Cars and planes were once 'wildly impractical' too.

**mtburb** · January-02-12, 04:46 PM

If you have Sketchup and the Sketchyphysics plugin, this might interest you:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehou...6&prevstart=12

**stasu1213** · January-02-12, 04:48 PM

Now that we are going the rapid bus way let us find a way to make it more efficient, safe, and passenger friendly. I would rather have light rail. However, if busses are, the second time in history, the thing of the future what can be done to improve the system. I had said a couple of years ago that Detroit need to have streets used for busses only as well as it running in the middle of Woodward, Gratiot, and other avenues. I had always thought that streets such as John R, Brush, Hamilton, Warren, could be used for busses. I not saying that cars should not be allowed to drive on these street for they do run through neighborhoods. but they are streets that are not hevily travelled. There should be street where busses could run almost uninterrupted Rapid busses would be excellent for Warren Avenue for it runs from east to west. The busses should run off of electricity instead of gasoline. I am sure others on this site could come up with other or different ideas for a better system