SkyTran Solution to Highway Congestion

This animation shows highway congestion caused by cars and how SkyTran alleviates it.

Frame 1 shows lots of cars on the highway.

Frame 2 shows just the cargo of importance - the people!
If you change your perspective to thinking about the real problem of moving just the people around to wherever they want to go whenever they want to go, then engineering solutions to congestion start to become apparent!

Ask yourself why are those cars so big?  Does it really require a 3,500 pound or larger mobile structure to move the average 170 pound adult from place to place?  When commuting using a 150 Horsepower car, 135 of those Horsepower are used to move the car - the rest to move YOU!
Next ask yourself why do most of the cars have only one person in them during rush hour congestion?  Commuters obviously place a high value on their choice of personal flexibility.
How often do two people want to leave from the same location to go to the same destination, let alone want to do it at the exact same time?
Personal flexibility is the prime reason why car pool lanes have never been successful in getting people to ride to work together.  It is too inconvenient.
So, if commuters want to ride alone, why not create more appropriately sized vehicles for them?

Frame 3 shows all the important human "cargo" moved to the center median.
The road is now completely empty!

Frame 4 shows the same number of people being driven to their destinations in automated personal sized vehicles.  The solution to modern congestion is closely packed, high speed, small individual vehicles moving in automatic synchronization with each other.   Autonomous, high speed, track guided passenger vehicles using low cost high speed computers and sensors can eliminate road congestion.  Note that one small unobtrusive SkyTran bi-directional guideway can carry the equivalent of 6 lanes of highway passenger traffic when ridden solo (12 highway lanes if ridden dual)!

Frame 5 shows the now empty asphalt lanes formerly used by the non-computer controlled automobiles converted to a grassy park! (Thanks to Jacob Groundwater, a student from
Vancouver, Canada for this add-on frame - Doug M. May 9, 2003)

In the early pioneer days, before internal combustion powered automobiles were invented, families used their "multi-passenger" horse drawn buckboard primarily to go to church on Sunday and for family group visits.  When you went somewhere yourself, you didn't hook the horse up to the buckboard, you threw a saddle on the horse and rode that more "personal sized" transportation!  We need to start thinking along those minimalist lines again.

Have you ever wondered why people who already own one car big enough to carry their entire family continue to purchase 2nd and 3rd cars that are also big enough to carry the entire family?  Why don't they all buy little 100 mpg personal sized peanut mobiles to commute alone back and forth to work in, instead of those 2nd and 3rd family sized vehicles?  Then twice as many vehicles could packed on any given highway (think motorcycle sized vehicles that had full bodies, creature comforts and 4 wheels instead of two).  

If all commuters drove this smaller form of vehicle to work, then the morning and evening rush hour congestion and current crawling along in bunches of big cars would be eliminated. 

This is simply because the current width highway lane could carry twice as many vehicles side by side.  Unfortunately, there are two logical reasons why that scenario won't happen.  No one is selling such vehicles now and if they started, personal safety in the interim (before such small 500 pound vehicles dominated the landscape) would be worse. Especially consider the 80,000 pound tractor-trailer trucks that the 3,000 pound cars currently share the roads with.  A big rig truck always wins in a collision with a car. 

The 21st century alternative to eliminate congestion as we know it is SkyTran technology.  Non-stop, high speed 100 mph commuting featuring unprecedented safety.   SkyTran is a non-polluting clean electric powered, go everywhere, on-demand, personalized transit system.  All it takes is modern computers; modern sensor and control systems; light-weight aerodynamic structures; and the economies of scale available with modern factory automation. 

Copyright©1999-2003, Douglas J. Malewicki, AeroVisions, Inc.