Walk 880 Steps to use SkyTran!
That's Ridiculous! What if it's Raining or Snowing?

Ahah! You are thinking cars and the mere 10 or 20 step walk from inside your house to all the way inside your garage to jump in and go! That is one of the exact reasons we love our cars. BUT, one must also consider how far does the average person walk after parking their car at work? Some people 20 steps; most a 100 steps; and unfortunate souls working for huge companies may walk 500 steps just to get from somewhere in the corner of the company parking lot to their building.

Also, consider how far the typical commuter walks to catch a BUS, SUBWAY or TRAIN? Does a couple of hundred steps and in some cases a 1,000 steps sound reasonable? AND, what about after one reaches his destination?

So - 880 steps may not be a big deal after all - AND don't forget that walking is supposed to be very good for us!
It's just that it is a pain whenever it is raining, snowing or very cold. (Of course, shivering and going BBRRRRR in Southern California is looked upon as Jurassic, which I guess makes that location a logical choice for building early SkyTran networks.)

Driving the family car to a SkyTran station is NOT an acceptable alternative
From a pollution standpoint, it would be a shame to drive the family car a few blocks just to conveniently grab a non-polluting SkyTran ride to work. Supposedly, 70% of all automotive pollution comes in the first few minutes while the catalyst pack is being heated up. (Honda recently announced a new technology that solves this problem without forcing people to sit in the car and wait for 3 minutes while an electrical heater prewarms the catalyst packs! Waiting is unacceptable - we humans would rather live with extra pollution!). Furthermore, a 3 minute trip, twice a day will not be beneficial for the long term health of the car engine. Lastly, where do all these cars get parked. To keep the per mile costs down we want to keep the SkyTran stations as minimalist non-stations - meaning NO extra money for parking lots! So, are there any logical alternatives to the average 880 step walk (in inclement weather or not) that avoids creating nearby ugly parking lots, which simultaneously avoids firing up the old family car, creating the associated pollution, etc?

How about a non-polluting electric car?
Well, this is debatable, too. It is, however, the perfect application for an electric vehicle and would definitely eliminate all that automobile warm-up pollution! You only have to drive it a maximum of one mile to get to a station. AND there is no reason to have to exceed even 20 MPH on such a short trip (two 3 minute trips per day). It can be a simple, low cost, machine that could be entirely powered by a single $50, existing 12 Volt car battery . The question remains, just where do you park it without having to still walk 200 of those average 880 steps? How about small, light, three wheel electrics as shown here and parking them staggered back-to-back to take up a minimum of parking area? Even if everyone used such logical compact machines, it still takes up space that I personally would rather see remain as green grass.

(Email Doug Malewicki if you would be interested in owning a 100 MPH, 100 MPG,
1,200 mile range, gas powered version of this 2 seat tandem, roadable spaceship!)

Obviously, much lower cost electric tricycles, with snap-on removable clear film plastic panels could be another all weather solution. Pedal or electric two wheel bicycles could also be used. Here the rider must wear the weather protection rather than get inside a machine that provides it. Rain Ponchos for the wet days, heavy Parkas, etc. for the freezing days.

Think Small
Again, we are trying to come up with a better way to move one little human an average distance of 880 steps. This does not take a 3,000 pound machine with 90 MPH capability! That distance can easily be walked in 8 to 10 minutes! 20 MPH capability reduces it to a 3 minutes trip! Whenever the weather is nice, walking or bicycling really are perfect solutions. But what if you don't want to leave your bike locked up all day by the SkyTran stop? What could we come up with that would be totally portable and easily carried along with you for use again at the destination to cover the distance to your school or office?

Think Smaller!
For fun, lets go nuts! How about a fold-up electric scooter that can be recharged enroute inside the SkyTran vehicle? Teeny little Roller Blade wheels would be inefficient from a rolling resistance standpoint, but wasting power as a tradeoff for super compactness seems essential. Looks like we could end up with something weighing 5 pounds that folds into an 18" long, 4" wide , 3" thick package. A quick analysis shows a 170 pound person on a 5 pound scooter going 20 MPH would require about 0.5 Horsepower = 378 Watts (standing upright is very poor aerodynamically) and at 15 MPH about .37 Horsepower = 278 Watts.

Small size combined with short trips and 20 MPH speeds minimizes on-board stored power requirements!
What is interesting is that producing that power for 3 minutes only takes 8 of the same 6,000 special quick recharge NiCad "C" cells used to produce 400 Horsepower in the White Lightning 237 MPH electric record car! That is only 19 ounces (1.2 pounds) of batteries!!! MMM! Electric car engineers are continually defeated by the horrible weight of the batteries to get any kind of decent speeds and range. These SkyTran "get to and from the station" trip specifications make electric battery power the perfect selection!
I realize the "suits" in New York wouldn't lower their dignity to use something of this nature for enhanced door-to-door commuting, but teenagers would take to it - in an instant. Of course, they all eventually grow up AND automatically select optimums no matter how weird they may seems at first ( Horseless carriages! Flying machines! Steam powered trains! (Some people actually thought humans wouldn't be able to breathe at those incredible 20 MPH speeds!) Replace a trusted horse with an almost impossible to balance rolling two wheeled contraption! - all very nutty in the beginning!!).
(This is interesting - while I'm writing this, I just had a better idea - a new invention. Will have to build one to see if it has any market viability. Teenagers will LOVE it! Very trick! Much better than a fold-up scooter! BUT, I absolutely could NOT have even conceived it - without first being aware of the power density of the White Lightning "C" cells along with one single technical aspect on something else we are just beginning to develop - that I can't tell you about (yet). Give me a couple of months to figure out what to do with it. After we get some basic intellectual property protection going, then I will divulge what it is all about here at the Web Site. What strikes me now is that ALL new inventions are based and built upon previous inventions. The first person to do NEW things with the old inventions gets to be called an "INVENTOR"! This SkyTran Personal/Mass Transportation invention is EXACTLY the same thing. Enough digression - back to the Personal/Mass Transportation future.)

You're Crazy!
These electric mini-scooters would be totally impractical in crowded cites like New York
Agreed! Besides the fact that the "Suits" would not be caught dead using such a preteen device, I'm sure user's "buzzing" (probably all too quietly) along the sidewalks at 15 to 20 MPH would soon be outlawed! The sidewalks are much too packed with pedestrians in downtown Manhattan! One does, however, see a lot of bicycle delivery people and a few Roller Blade delivery people using the crowded streets and all going faster than the auto traffic! The question is - how safe would that be?
Anyway, let's not be negative and just toss the idea out as useless - because the fold-up scooter's compactness and very light weight definitely have potential value. We can file it mentally for now and start thinking about alternative possibilities for the real task. It is all in the definition of what are we really trying to accomplish! We don't want portable scooters as much as we want better ways to get commuters from the Pod stations to their buildings faster and safer in inclement weather. Again, when inventing we are always allowed and encouraged to think bizarre and to think selfish!

Concrete sidewalks, paved roads and towering skyscrapers.
Downtown Manhattan is a special situation. An unbelievable amount of very tall buildings everywhere! In fact, there are so many people using that city that it might be logical to consider placing parallel tracks and the 3-Dimensional grid closer together than the envisioned 1 mile apart? The question is "Where do you put them??" Remember an important SkyTran criteria is that we never want to take up any valuable land space (or pay for it) - let alone make 300 foot wide swaths of destruction through a neighborhood or city - as required to add new roads or light rail train tracks.

The only thing I can think of is to apply the other rule which says "For safety the SkyTran track has to always be above all other road traffic." So why not just attach the stations to the building themselves up at the third story level. (MMM! For a really neat view, maybe we should put them higher up at the level of the tenth story!) It is important to note that the weight of even 100 SkyTran vehicles and associated track is insignificant compared to the actual weight the building's structure already has to support. Thus, there would be no structural ramifications (except for tons of paper work to prove it to the bureaucrats). Also, the span between buildings is larger than envisioned for the pole system - but you can always play Golden Gate Bridge cable suspension games. Plus, in this case you could also cable restrain the track sideways too, which would both unload the structure in high wind conditions AND keep it all aligned for the smoothest possible ride. Also, it saves installing a lot of poles!

Each building that wanted a station would donate a room (or maybe four - one on each side of the building) that are modified to become the "station". Probably would be much cheaper to create a universal, mass produced, bolt-on station module that is lifted by crane and attached to the buildings. Once you get this kind of system installed along every block in Manhattan (in the necessary 3-Dimensional grid configuration of North-South plus East-West parallel tracks) you would never see any Taxicabs again in downtown Manhattan. They would become VERY obsolete once you could travel anyplace in Downtown Manhattan at 100 MPH without ever going out in the weather at all! (Later I will dig out a Manhattan map and figure out a logical grid, calculate some installation costs and figure out the awesome expected hourly passenger capacity.) The cab companies, the cab drivers and the Taxi cab union will hate us!!

I can see it now. A knock on my door and a 6' 3", 250 pound hulk in a fancy suit tells me "Hey, Mr. Inventor, Da boss wants to talk wid you". I begin to sweat and say "Oh, Oh, have I offended a vested interest and now I am going to get free concrete shoes?" The hulk says "No, Mr. Inventor, we dun't do dat stuff anymore. Da boss is now a repootible business man dese days. He wants tah invest in youse Peepil Pods and buy da exclusive licensing rights for downtown New Yark." Whew, talk about a close call!
OR it could be the CIA being sent out to "protect" the vested interests of the Presidential Campaign Fund contributions from the oil companies, the concrete industries and the demolition companies who love to profit whenever they get to make miles long, 300 foot wide swaths through neighborhoods.
Or it could be a recall to my mothership. "Lieutenant Malewicki, you know the penalty for giving advanced technologies to backwards planets. Step into the molecular disassembler. Do you have any last words?" "Oh, boy - Help - Agents Mully and Sculdur, please come quick!" (Yes, I'm tired - time for a break!)