People have been using personal transportation for centuries, traveling on foot or on horse, via carriage or via car. Personal transportation is more flexible and convenient than mass transit, because it is there when you need it (on-demand) and goes directly to your destination. Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is the next step in personal transportation. SkyTran is an innovative Personal Rapid Transit system: a combination of existing and mature technologies that can move people and packages through cities at high speed while using very little energy.

The technology is here.

The Design
SkyTran is designed with four goals in mind:

• Fast efficient travel,
  
• Safety,
• Inexpensive construction, and
• Reliability (inexpensive maintenance).
  

Every innovation incorporated into SkyTran enhances at least one of these goals. Safety is both an intended and unintended consequence of the design - while safety is a core issues that SkyTran has been designed to maximize, the other aspects of the design that improve its cost-effectiveness, efficiency, and reliability also ensure that it will be the safest transportation system ever developed. To achieve these goals, SkyTran has six key design features:

• Few moving parts,
  
• Computer control,
• Light-weight parts (vehicles and track),
• Personal vehicles available at all times,
• Vehicles suspended below the track, and
• Elevated track with no intersections.

Fewer moving-parts requires less maintenance, computer control is safer and more efficient than a human driver, and light-weight parts reduce the all-around cost of everything. Having personal vehicles available at all times frees users from schedules and allows non-stop travel to their destination - which is faster and more efficient. Vehicles suspended below the track reduces torsion stress around turns - reducing construction cost - and allows for a covered track that never gets rain, snow, or other debris on it - reducing maintenance and increasing safety and efficiency.

Lastly, an elevated track allows a SkyTran system to be very flexible, and require almost no land. Elevated tracks also allows what transportation people call "grade separation", or the elimination of intersections by building tracks at different heights or "grades". The guideway, then, does not intersect but is built so one track runs above the other - like a freeway overpass. With grade separation, a vehicle never has to stop at a crossing, which increases speed, efficiency, and safety.