When we say SkyTran will travel at 100 MPH above the city streets, some people no doubt think of Minority Report's levitating, streamlined vehicles swooping about a future megalopolis. They are wrong. SkyTran inventor Doug Malewicki built a precursor of SkyTran, his 155-MPG "California Commuter" micro-car, in 1980. His first paper on the SkyTran system was presented to the Society of Automotive Engineers in 1991. The near-future possibilities of SkyTran mean a real difference in people's lives. These examples are set in Los Angeles, but you might see the same benefits anywhere. Here's what fast might mean to a few Angelenos - and you:

• Lily enjoyed the job she held as a housekeeper and nanny for a nice family in Brentwood. Even more, she loved the home the job allowed her to provide for her two children on the other side of LA, in Montebello. She was not fond, however, of the two hours and fifteen minutes on three different buses - the Montebello 20, the Metro Local 108, and the Santa Monica 14 - that were necessary to make it the twenty-five miles each way. When her nephew's job took him to the Westside, as well, and she could ride along, but things weren't much better: with traffic, the journey could still take an hour and forty minutes. Once the SkyTran grid expanded into her neighborhood, however, it seemed like a miracle when her commute was reduced to just fifteen minutes each way. The nearly four hours of time she gained back in her life made it feel like an entirely new one: A life in which she could make her own kids' breakfast, make sure they left for school on time each morning and finished their homework before bed each night, and most of all make sure they just enjoyed a little free time together, even after a hard day's work.
• Adrienne just wanted to finish her shift at the Beverly Center in time to see her friend's short film premiere at the festival in the Egyptian Theater. Why hadn't the Red Line subway made it from Hollywood & Highland to where she actually worked? And her stupid learner's permit wasn't helping, not that driving would be very fast during rush hour gridlock - If you factored in the hunt for parking, the four miles might as well be one hundred. It would take an hour and twenty minutes to walk the narrow sidewalks, and in this heat? Forget it. There was the West Hollywood Dash, which sometimes took only twenty minutes....But she had just missed it, which meant another twenty minutes of waiting, so at least forty minutes total, for a grand average speed of: Six miles per hour. And it's not like there were trailers and she could just sneak in late - It was a short film, after all! That's why it was such a relief when a customer reminded Adrienne to try the new SkyTran link that had come online just last week; she'd been so busy she had completely forgotten about it. The vehicles were lined up and waiting for her, the cost was just a bit more than the dash, and best of all: The whole trip was shorter than the film's running time of three whole minutes.
• Mitch felt lucky to have one college teaching job, and even luckier to have two - It was going to take both if he would be able to pay back his student loans anytime soon. What felt unlucky, however, were those days when he taught day classes at Cal State Long Beach, and evening classes at Cal State Northridge. The two hours dodging big rigs and fighting other traffic to make it the full fifty miles was aggravating, to say the least! And those two weeks his broken down hatchback was in the shop were the worst. The transit authority's website couldn't even plan his trip! Once he had finally figured it out, life wasn't much better: The trip on the 50 Bus, then the Orange County Metrolink, and then the Ventura County Metrolink took over three and a half hours! Sure he could read or even grade papers, but with an average speed of under fifteen miles for the whole journey, he felt like he might as well be trapped in a horse and buggy. That's why, once the SkyTran grid encompassed both universities, Mitch let the old hatchback break down for good. Now he could take SkyTran between the two far flung universities in less than half an hour. With the extra time he finally had to prepare, the SkyTran guideway put him on the tenure track at Northridge in no time at all.

The examples above can be made into reality because SkyTran is designed to be run at relatively high speeds safely and with high efficiency. At 100 mph, the vehicles are as quiet as a bicycle and four times as efficient as the greenest cars. Because SkyTran can get you to your destination fast, it will save you time - giving you more to spend with your family and friends. For SkyTran, fast applies to the speed of construction, as well. The California High Speed Rail project, passed with an initial $9 billion in funds by voters in November 2008, will not begin construction until 2011, and its implementation plan foresaw eight to eleven years as required to "develop and begin operation of an initial segment of the California high-speed train." Since the $9B is only a small part of a cost as large as $80 billion, the rate of future progress is even more uncertain. SkyTran, on the other hand, is designed to be useful from its very first mile of track - It doesn't require a four hundred mile link between San Francisco and Los Angeles before it becomes useful. Instead, the economics of SkyTran will drive rapid expansion of a grid that will exploit network effects - increased utility with increased size - to reach as many people as quickly is possible.

Not only is SkyTran fast, but it is non-stop to your destination. There aren't any intersections or other stops before your destination. A consequence of this is that your travel time will always be consistent. SkyTran is extremely reliable and is immune to almost all the traffic and scheduling problems that plague cars and trains. In fact, SkyTran will get you to most destinations much faster than trains or even airplanes that boast much higher top speeds. Because of all that airport security time, or intermediate stops your train will make along the way, or even stops for gas you might make in your car, SkyTran's average speed will always be faster for trips of up to a few hundred miles.

Smaller size means smaller environmental impact and a speedier environmental review process. Tiny infrastructure is less disruptive, thus allowing for accelerated planning and approval. Uniformity of components and construction techniques means each subsequent deployment can benefit from lessons already learned to move things along. SkyTran delivers all this along with proposed construction techniques that would enable miles of new infrastructure to spring up almost overnight. And where SkyTran goes, congestion fears to tread.