San Jose held a conference last week on podcars, the new name for personal rapid transit (PRT). Exhibitors included a variety of planning and consulting firms as well as at least three companies–2getthere, Ultra (which built the Heathrow line), and Vectus–that would like your tax dollars so they can build a podcar system for your city.
One of the members of the audience was Brad Templeton, a software engineer and advocate of robocars–which the Antiplanner calls driverless cars. Templeton notes that Sebastian Thrune, the Stanford researcher who led the Google driverless car program (as well as the Volkswagen program) made a presentation that was politely received–but none of the podcar developers admitted to knowing much about driverless cars.
As the Antiplanner as noted before, there is a big difference between podcars and robocars. The first requires all new infrastructure, while the second can use the existing 4 million miles of roads to take people just about anywhere they want to go.
This has two important implications for the future of transportation. The first is that driverless cars will not require a huge investment from taxpayers. In fact, it should not require any tax subsidies at all (though it will require government action to reform existing liability and traffic laws).
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Less obvious but possibly more important, no one is going to make a fortune on driverless cars. If just one city, such as San Jose, decided to build a podcar network, whatever company selected to do the network would stand to make hundreds of millions in profits, thus leading potential companies to work hard for such contracts. On the other hand, while auto companies are likely to make some money on the gizmos needed for robocars, in the long run they probably won’t earn that much more profit than by just selling regular cars.
This means robocars, unlike podcars, are not going to have strong commercial advocates. The advocates for them must be the taxpayers who will save the billions of dollars that will otherwise be spent on such things as podcar networks, light rail, high-speed rail, and other obsolete forms of travel that will be rendered even more obsolete by driverless cars.
If podcars are so much more expensive than robocars, then why are so many people and cities who aren’t connected with a construction firm interested in the idea? One answer is in the lead sentence of a news report about the podcar conference: “Pod cars promise the convenience of a car with the environmental benefits of mass transit.” This is a double lie, of course: podcars will never be as convenient as cars, and mass transit has no real environmental benefits over cars.
But I think the real attraction of podcars, for some, is control: if people can go only where the podcar network goes, then governments will have more control over where development takes place, where people live, and where they travel. Aside from the cost, this is the most important reason to resist the podcar scheme.
Shouldn’t any discussion of pod cars mention the (very expensive) PRT system in Morgantown, W.Va.?
Jon Bell has pictures and discussion of the Morgantown system here.
The University of West Virginia University PRT system reminds me of the “story” of how NASA needed a pen that would write in zero gravity, so it spent a lot of money inventing the space pen. The Soviet space program also needed to write in zero gravity, so they just used a pencil.
Podcars. Why wouldn’t I just take a train?
Robocars. I’ll believe it when I see it (implemented outside of the testing stage). It’s seems like there is a lot to do outside of designing working robocars (see: planning).
Borealis wrote:
“The University of West Virginia University PRT system reminds me of the “story†of how NASA needed a pen that would write in zero gravity, so it spent a lot of money inventing the space pen. The Soviet space program also needed to write in zero gravity, so they just used a pencil.”
Yes, I’ve also heard that urban myth. In reality, the graphite in pencils is an electrical conductor, the last thing you want floating around a spaceship in zero gravity.
C.P Zilliacus wrote:
“Shouldn’t any discussion of pod cars mention the (very expensive) PRT system in Morgantown, W.Va.?
Jon Bell has pictures and discussion of the Morgantown system here.”
Except that it is Group Rapid Transit (GRT) rather than PRT.
bennett wrote:
“Podcars. Why wouldn’t I just take a train?
Robocars. I’ll believe it when I see it (implemented outside of the testing stage). It’s seems like there is a lot to do outside of designing working robocars (see: planning).”
Trains are scheduled – PRT/podcars aren’t, they respond to demand. Trains require drivers, PRT/podcars don’t. So it should be possible to produce a service which is cheap to run, and which you don’t have to wait for.
The reason why PRT hasn’t caught on is, I think, twofold. Firstly, the people designing these systems are too ambitious. For example, the pods are supposed to merge at junctions – very difficult for humans to do, let alone computers. Signalised junctions would be simpler, with similar capacities. Secondly, although it is supposed to be a replacement for a car, it goes station-to-station rather than door-to-door.
The main issue is that car drivers don’t charge themselves for their time, whereas bus drivers charge their passengers. PRT doesn’t charge, just like a private car, subject to the obvious costs and limitations. Jitneys and the like are more likely to make a dent in car and bus patronage than PRT. The driver costs are zero, and the vehicle can go door-to-door.
As for automated cars, I don’t think it stands much of a chance outside of the laboratory. These cars will require accurate maintenance – otherwise the computer will say left, and the car goes right. A bit of dodgy maintenance, by the owner or the garage is all it takes.
Brand new cars come with sticking pedals, and dodgy brakes. What chance does an extra-sensitive computerised car stand?
I actually puzzled a bit before setting on the term robocars. Most of the other terms — self-driving cars, autonomous vehicles and so on I feel are a bit long for regular public use. Driverless cars is also that way and is slightly off. The cars are driven, but by software, not people. And in early incarnations, they may have a supervisor/driver who does occasional problem solving for the car. (Google’s prototypes have a full time supervisor/driver who is legally the driver as far as the vehicle code is concerned.) No term was in common use. The actual developers tended to just call them “the car” or “the robot” but that doesn’t work either.
Why don’t people buy PRT? Many reasons. The foremost is that municipal government administrators are not early adopters of new technology. That’s the big reason robocars win in the end. They are bottom-up, bought by these early adopters and done one at a time. But unlike a small PRT like at Heathrow that can only go to 3 stops, the first robocar goes everywhere that it’s legal to go. The governments do have to do something, but it’s mainly to get out of the way as long as the industry makes the vehicles safe. Not to be an early adopter. It is no accident the first PRTs are going to an airport and an experimental city in a rich Emirate.
I’m a little more up on PRT after pod car city. I don’t think it will ever get into large deployment, but it is pioneering some useful robocar related technologies, and due to the deployments at Heathrow and the Masdar university, I think it will get a few more sales in Campus and airport environments. Quite possibly in San Jose.
PRT pods actually should be energy efficient, more so than transit. Some transit systems are more efficient than cars (notably Manhattan subway and a few others.) The lighter PRT pods should be able to do even better, as will the robocars. The robocars can do yet better if single-person robocars become popular, which is a good goal though not a given. Single person vehicles are inherently much more efficient than anything we currently use. Most PRTs don’t try to provide single-person vehicles because their designs tend to like all the pods being the same.
A computerized car stands a very good chance as it will probably notice if the steering or brakes are off quite quickly, even faster than a person would. Indeed, such vehicles will probably routinely test all their systems every time they are vacant, and every time they are worked on, which humans aren’t so diligent as to do.
The Autoplanner; I think the real attraction of podcars, for some, is control…
THWM: Though at the same time you want Big Brother controling your automobile robotically.
If anyone cares, here’s an interesting analysis of the San Jose PRT conference:
http://www.publictransit.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=248&Itemid=1
Hey Michael Setty,
Huge Hardon is a swell pseudo-name. That article sure does sound like its from the perspective of a racist & ageist angle, but we know that’s not the case.
Those accusations can only be applied people who know about the reality of economic principles & support individual responsibility.
Oh, excuse me, maybe I should leave. I seem to kill debate, since I destroy the lefty-statist falsities & misconceptions.
Although, I am way off topic–going from urban specifics to economics, ideology & the leftist distortion–there is much inter-connection & many people usually do not understand.
Scott, you’ll be happy to know that Hugh and Setty and not the same people. If you’ll try and get beyond your cheap flaming, you might to figure out the reason for posting the link is to show that PRT is such a flawed concept that even pro-transit people find fault. See also:
http://www.roadkillbill.com/PRTisaJoke.html
Huge Hardon, I don’t know what cheap flaming is.
I don’t know why you think that I’d be happy that I was wrong about my guess that the fake name above was used by Michael Setty.
Thanks for the link. Maybe soon people will realize that most LRT, HSR & many other projecjts are jokes too.
I think part of people not realizing the transit has many drawbacks, limitation & negatives, is lack of math skills. If you don’t understand that, then you have probably identified yourself as a candidate for missing an aspect reasoning.
If anyone still cares, Setty posted a follow-up on his blog:
http://www.publictransit.us/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=249&Itemid=1