Country folk tend to like the independence offered by their cars, so how do you get them to use public transit? The Monocab system may be the answer, as it utilizes individual on-demand pods that travel on existing abandoned railways.
  • Prunebutt@slrpnk.net
    61·
    2 months ago

    Why is it always these goddamn pods that are supposed to improve public transit? What’s wrong with trains?

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netOPM
    241·
    2 months ago

    Its kinda cool how by making it mono-rail, they can use a single track rail to have pods moving in both directions, and the rail could still be used during the night for regular cargo trains.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
      183·
      2 months ago

      It looks monorail at first but if you look closer its not.

      I also wouldn’t want to be the forgetful dumb person that forgot how late it was before taking this thing home because those cargo trains ain’t gonna stop.

      • Jaytreeman@kbin.social
        14·
        2 months ago

        It actually is monorail. It looks like the stabilizing arm is for when the vehicle is off and not moving. It uses a gyroscope while moving for stabilization

      • Cheradenine@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        13·
        2 months ago

        It is a monorail, the outrigger is just for testing purposes. It’s gyro stabilized. The tech has been around for more than 100 years, developers always wanted higher capacity which is problematic.

    • temmink@feddit.de
      6·
      2 months ago

      Using that for monorails and regular cargo trains would require the monorails to follow regulations and I don’t see that happening.

      • poVoq@slrpnk.netOPM
        41·
        2 months ago

        Not if it is strictly time separated. Like I wrote, I could see these pods operate exclusively during the day and regular/cargo trains operate exclusively during the night. Or any other such time based system.

        • bluGill@kbin.social
          31·
          2 months ago

          That isn’t acceptable. One person who for whatever reason is out late (emergency at work, or invited to a party) will be screwed when they can’t get back home and tell everyone else.

          • poVoq@slrpnk.netOPM
            62·
            2 months ago

            At 3am? Come on. And that’s also true for all public transport.

            • bluGill@kbin.social
              22·
              2 months ago

              I know it is true almost everywhere, but that doesn’t make it acceptable. People need to get places, transit is just a tool.

              • itsralC@lemm.ee
                3·
                2 months ago

                Better than nothing still, don’t let perfect be the enemy of good and all that

                • bluGill@kbin.social
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  While you are not wrong, you should always strive to perfection. Running train transit 24x7x365 is low hanging fruit (modern fully automated trains exist - note that the topic here is trains not buses). You do need to do something about maintenance, so I’ll let you get by with 30 minute headways overnight, while during the day you should be running every 5 minutes.

  • caboose2006@lemmy.ca
    18·
    2 months ago

    And then you can widen it to fit more people abreast. Then lengthen it to fit more people front to back. Then hook them together because a lot of people are going to the same destination… The new becomes old again.

  • athos77@kbin.social
    10·
    2 months ago

    I like the idea, but there doesn’t seem a way for a pod to temporarily move into the other track, which raises questions. Like, how do they handle rebalancing the pods? Ideally, you want a free one at each station for the next person who comes along, but if you come into a station with pods already there, do you have to get out and move to the first pod? Or when you leave your station, do all the pods on the line automatically move one station up the line, making a new pod available for the next person and leaving you a smooth trip to your destination (but limiting energy savings)? Do the pods have to cycle all the way to the end of the line to turn around (again, energy inefficient if most of the traffic is between a lesser number of stations)?

    I like the idea, I really do! I’m just curious how they handle balancing availability and traffic.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.netOPM
      31·
      2 months ago

      Good questions. I guess given how lightweight these pods look there could be probably some sort of lifting device at some of the stations to move the pods between the two rails.

      • GluWu@lemm.ee
        7·
        2 months ago

        Since they’re light weight, they don’t need the heavy rail for freight trains that put >25 tons per axle. It would be incredibly easy to make little switching stations that could pass, turn, and store these pods. Having mini train infrastructure like that everywhere would complete my autism. Life would be complete and I could die happy in a monorail pod crash.

  • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
    6·
    2 months ago

    Interesting idea. Would only realistically work on abandoned lines rather than rarely used lines, with special permission from the railroad infrastructure owner and the national governing body for railways (Federal Railroad Administration in the case of US, Eisenbahn-Bundesamt in Germany), since normal railway signalling systems for single track wouldn’t work with the bidirectional monorail system.

  • AVincentInSpace@pawb.socialEnglish
    4·
    2 months ago

    oh boy a brand new gadget bahn

    at the least it is (presumably) cheaper than fully restoring those old railways and getting actual two-track trains running on them