SkyTran is
just like driving your own car to work - but a whole lot faster, cheaper
and safer! AND you don’t even have to drive it - each SkyTran
vehicle has a super attentive
computer acting as your personal chauffeur! A thousand times each second
your chauffeur makes decisions to insure your safety: continually
checking on other nearby SkyTran
vehicles; rechecking the
vehicles electrical and mechanical health; and rechecking that the
fastest route to your selected destination remains uncongested ahead.
Most importantly, your computer chauffeur NEVER daydreams nor gets
distracted!
Once boarded, a SkyTran
vehicle becomes your
private vehicle. You decide exactly where you
want the computer chauffeur to take you. No stopping at each and every
station to let some people off and new people on. No more concerns about
unsavory types riding along with you. Your vehicle travels overhead on a
monorail freeway safely above all other
traffic and only exits this freeway to slow down and stop at your
selected destination station.
Two passenger SkyTran
vehicles will be in abundance
at each station - you just get in and go - no more waiting for a
scheduled bus or train and no more rushing to make that schedule
time. One secret to the SkyTran
MagLev transportation
concept is the use of extremely light weight, advanced composite, 200
pound, non-polluting, pure electric powered vehicles that are super
streamlined. While traveling at steady 100 MPH on an overhead monorail
track system, a SkyTran
achieves an outstanding
equivalent of up to 400 MPG energy efficiency! MagLev (Magnetic
Levitation) uses electricity to suspend the
SkyTran vehicle
instead of rubber tires inflated with air that can puncture. There are
no tires or gears in a SkyTran
vehicle. This means no
mechanical contact and no mechanical systems to wear out. SkyTran
is a pure solid
state transportation system!
The main secret to the SkyTran
system, however, is cost!
In high volume, mass production, each small, private SkyTran
vehicle will be a thousand
times cheaper than a single 100 passenger train car. More
importantly, since most SkyTran
vehicles and its passengers
will weigh no more than 600 pounds, the monorail track to safely support
a continuous stream of vehicles
can use 1/100th the structural materials than if it
has to continually support standard tractor-trailers trucks weighing
80,000 pounds. This translates to under $1 million per mile for the SkyTran
monorail track. Light Rail and
Monorail Train track costs more than $30 million per mile -
meaning 15 miles of Light Rail track through the heart of a city would
cost $450 million.
Light Rail proponents claim they can
move up to 30,000 people per hour and therefore
SkyTran is
not as viable as light rail because SkyTran
can only move up to 14,400
people per hour. Why not spend the same exact money as
spent on a light rail system to put in 30 sets of 15 mile long SkyTran
monorail tracks. Better yet,
build an intersecting grid of 15 by 15 parallel SkyTran
tracks a mile apart and now be
able to move 432,000 people per hour anywhere on that grid!!
Then - ask yourself which system will be instantly useful to more people
in the city! No more taking a car or a bus to connect to a train!