Inhabitat

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Wow, nice looking scheme. Sort of ‘big’ personal rapid transit - the same raised guideways, off-line stations, automated pods and so on … is this really going to get off the drawing board this year, or would it just be nice? I am surprised that we have not heard about it before, as usually it takes YEARS to get the necessary planning / test the design of a new system like this. Especially if you’re going to integrate the conduction of services (which is a very sensible idea if it happens).

The solar panels look very improbably placed - surely the guide rails will shade them for a good portion of the day?

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what’s cool about the info conduit being in the elevated rails is that could enhance accessibility for repair and upgrades.

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I probably read it wrong, but oh, what a wonderful idea, to drive your car up onto an overland ‘ferry’ to go from city to city… Use a more efficient means of transport to deliver you and you vehicle between cities, while you ride in a coach and maybe doze or work on your laptop. It’d be particularly useful for someone who regularly travels between cities, or someone planning an extended vacation using their own car.

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this sounds cool, i hope it gets funded
btw, there isn’t such a thing as “watts per hour.” You probably mean that it would generate 848,000 watts during peak time. Watts is a measurement of power, which is merely energy per time. so saying watts per hour is like saying energy per time per time…

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Although this looks and sounds like a fantastic idea it does look more like a Uni project rather than a viable solution that has actually been thought through. Has anyone actually checked to see if this is a ‘real’ development?

Something of this scale would surely have more information and better imagery than a few hand drawn sketches and random claims!?!? There would have to be a prototype somewhere that has been tested for durability, maintenance issues, safety, build costings and efficiency…just to name a few! I also find it bizaar that all the designs have single carriage schemes rather than multiple! I mean if that was a good and efficient idea we’d see more trains like that right now!

That being said I would love to see something like this actually built and running. I seriously doubt that would happen in the above format….ever.!

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If this happens, it will be amazing. Michigan, Detroit in particular, has been in need of a good mass transit system of some kind and this would be great to pave the way for more development for the city of Detroit. Hopefully we could also build similar systems going to the north and south instead of just west. It seems too good to be true, but I sincerely hope this happens.

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What electromagnetic fields would people be exposed to?….

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“watts per hour” is what your power company uses to charge you for your usage. Better known as kilowatts per hour or kw/h

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I live in Ann Arbor and commute to Detroit, as I have lived here all my life.

I cannot stress how much this smells like a scam.

Detroit and Ann Arbor absolutely NEED a reliable passenger rail system connecting the 2 cities - indeed, such a line should also include Detroit Metro Airport, and ideally be extended northward into Oakland and Macomb counties. There’s been plenty of talk about a conventional light rail system that has a good deal of support. Likelihood of execution of such a line skews low, what with all the tax and funding issues on the line in this dead-last state economy.

I barely trust the various government officials in places of power to execute a standard light rail system. For something like this? This? This is nothing short of a pipe dream that wreaks of scam and/or government waste from any angle.

Construction to be set to start this year? With nary a mention by any local news outlet? It’s an outright lie.

Solar and hydropower? The auto companies would sooner jump on that talent pool before this venture could ever get off the ground.

As much as I’m for interurban rail in SE Michigan, this ludicrousness of this story actually ANGERS me.

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I met these guys before. I was working some place that these type of people ended up all the time. I don’t want to go into that any more. BUT, think about it. Why Michigan?! They want to build it from Detroit to Traverse or something like that if I remember right. Ok. Detroit proper has less than 1 million people. Traverse has far, FAR less. Toronto via Detroit to Chicago would make sense…

When I talked to these guys it was about 2 1/2 years go. They couldn’t answer any of my questions then, and it doesn’t look like they got any further.

I love the idea, but…

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@ Will and Andros: You probably know already, but newer amorphous solar panels, don’t have a steep drop off in efficiency with overcast skies or partial shading. It’s possible they plan on using this newer technology. With older panels, partial shading could render the panel essentially useless. The amorphous panels–with a 10% reduction in solar irradiation– would drop electrical output by around 10%. Solar is still possible in northern climes. The cold is actually an advantage.

@ Paul: Power companies charge in kilowatt -hours. It’s not divided by hours, it’s multiplied by hours. Since a watt is already a rate (divided by time), multiplying by time cancels out the time that is part of the watt.

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It’s a Kilowatt hour… Kilowatt x Hour not kilowatts per hour.

A kilowatt hour is a sustained draw of a kilowatt for one hour. e.g. 10 x 100 watt lightbulbs = 1 kilowatt (total draw). Leave ‘em on for an hour and you’ve just burnt a kilowatt hour.

To be pedantic, energy is measured in joules, and watts measure power (1 watt = 1 joule per second)… so if you want to talk about total energy used, you gotta multiply power by a time term… hence KW x H.

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The thing about mass transit in Detroit, the Motorcity, is that it must involve moving cars as well as people. The reason ideas like these are so rare in MI is because the automakers have lobbied against them for years, as they believe people would stop buying/using cars and their profits would be affected. As a metro-Detroiter myself, I’d love to see this!!!….buuut, I’ve never heard anything about it until now. Until I see it in my local paper, it’s bogus.

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It seems like no-one took the time to actually read the description of the design before they began to attack it.

Regardless of whether or not you think its practical, it says nowhere in the article that this design will actually be implemented.

How can we move on to better ideas when we all seem so desperate to tear each other’s down?

It will take true inspiration and a combined effort to solve the dilemmas of our energy crisis.

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Ah, so this is completely fake. The idea that this will ’start construction’ next year is made up. If a system like this anywhere in the nation actually existed, it would be front page news every day in the local paper (like light rail and street cars are in Seattle). Can someone give a link to a local Michigan paper where they talk about this project, the funding, construction information, editorials, etc? No? Because it doesn’t exist. If something like this was real, even close, Popular Science would have devoted a whole issue to it. And that web site was basement homebrew at best….not a real construction company site.

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The articles are very difficult to print (correctly) in Firefox (I’m not sure of Internet Explorer). Why is there no “Print View” button option - or at least the ability to have the print look anywhere CLOSE to the actual page?

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Someone wanted a local paper source - here it is 2yrs old. This apparently is recycled news.

http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=9666

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The idea is fantastic - let’s hope it at least gets some creative minds working towards innovative options and out of the box thinking.

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It’s great to explore how hydrogen as an alternative fuel can positively impact the environment. The National Hydrogen Association is supportive of creative projects such as this proposed solar-hydrogen powered transit system. Using hydrogen as an alternative fuel can help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Combining this with production of hydrogen from solar energy through electrolysis creates a completely clean system – the only emission in the process is water. New ideas such as this are key to furthering our nation’s goal of a sustainable energy future, and we hope to see more projects such as this become a reality.

Currently, California is currently leading the way developing the first hydrogen highway with other transit projects in progress. For example, the AC Transit system in the San Francisco, CA area has deployed 3 hydrogen fuel cell buses. You can even see the buses running in real time, monitor power usage and pollution reduction achieved by visiting their website bus stats page. Furthermore, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District is about the open a new hydrogen fueling station that generates hydrogen on-site via solar panels and electrolysis – the only ingredient that needs to be added is water http://www.smud.org/community-environment/evs/hydrogenfuelstation.html

With the recent media exposure focusing on hydrogen cars, it is easy to overlook hydrogen’s versatility and how it can power different applications such as portable electronics and serve as emergency power. Millennium Cell, a fuel cell manufacturer, is preparing to launch a portable fuel cell unit to power small devices such as laptops: http://www.physorg.com/news118683361.html. Additionally, Motorola is preparing to rollout the first fuel cell powered cell phone by 2010: http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/15/angstrom-power-touts-hydrogen-fuel-cells-for-cellphones/

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Well, sir, there’s nothing on earth like a genuine, Bona fide, Electrified, Six-car Monorail! Monorail! Monorail!

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I live in Ann Arbor, our area is in need of well designed public transport, in fact Mayor of Ann Arbor has been pushing for creation of light rail transportation for years. Unfortunately this story is not set in reality or facts and has been debunked by Ann Arbor officials. If anyone wants to see a working monorail, all you have to do is watch an episode of Simpsons featuring monorail in Springfield.

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I am a HUGE proponent of Mass Transit and I am worried that elementary schemes like this do more harm for the cause than help. Although some of the ideas here are good (like combining infrastructure), I’d like to add a few critiques to the ones already stated.

The solar panels should not be in the shade. No matter how “new” the solar technology is, PV’s work more efficiently when they are not facing north, away from the sun in MI, and when they are not in the shade of rails.

I can’t seem to find a good explanation of your version of “maglev technology”? Maybe I just missed it because the website is juvenile. Are the tiny pods that ride on the rails little induction motors? The German maglev trains seem to need much bigger induction technology than that. Also, they generate their own power as they pass over magnets in the track. Can a “pod” that is 4 feet off the track do that? Furthermore, maglev eliminates the need for 2 tracks.

Running separate cars on a single line is inefficient. I realize the tcp/ip stuff might make it possible but why? What is wrong with attaching cars together so that a minimum amount of propulsion can move the whole string? Trains are by far the most elegant and efficient way to move people and freight. That’s why they were successful 150 years ago when we couldn’t produce much power. Isn’t reduce the first of the three Rs?

Putting an automobile in a bigger car seems to be the most ridiculous part of this. It’s especially poignant that it’s an SUV in the rendering. That speaks of an over-consumption enabling system. A state funded car chauffeur service for those who can afford it. Once again, trains can carry hundreds of cars and Amtrak already does this, but only over long distances. A commuter line next to an INTERSTATE does not need to carry cars!

This whole thing panders to the auto industry in an effort to gain acceptance in Michigan. A better approach would be to continue to convince politicians that trains are not fundamentally at odds with cars. We obviously need both. Efficient cars are good for random short distances but suck for commuting. Trains are perfect for commuting but can’t go everywhere. We now have all our eggs in one basket and that is obviously dangerous. Commuter lines will reduce the number of cars on the overloaded interstates but GM can rest assured that most people will still buy cars.

Finally, this whole plan reminds me of something my classmates and I would have come up with in our 2nd year of Industrial Design school. We would be embarrassed to advertise the project at this phase of development as “being built next year”. I would not be so publicly critical of this whole thing if it were presented as a concept and not a reality.

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James E Says: Why all the negative comments?

Its not that the readers oppose this idea, James, its just that this particular project seems to be fishy (for a number of reasons), if not an outright scam. I could not get past their cheesy website- its not even professionally done. And these are the guys getting millions of dollars to implement cutting edge technologies?

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Lucky people in Michigan! Nothing happends here in Norway, we’re just inventing some very good green technologies, but our premier wont bother, but just tell uss to do something when we have Europes highest tax level.

wished we had that railsystem here in Oslo.

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While I agree with those cho say that at the conceptual level this is a great idea, I’m not so sure it’s anywhere near a reality.

Just spent about 45 minutes trying to find some information of Detroit’s official website. After considerable nosing around, I finally stumbled acorss a link to “Detroit People Mover,” but saw nothing there. Shortly after, I stumbled across another link to the Detroit Department of Transportation, and on that page, saw a link to a study of what to do. Clicked that; no joy. The link was to a video which never opened, even after numerous tries.

I also read the news article another contributor provided, but it seemed rather short on specifics. (Many thanks for providing the link, however.)

I will say that as great an idea as this might be, the economics of such a system seem to require considerable participation by a national government — *especially* in the very cradle of our automobile industry.

Look at the world’s first operational maglev system: the one linking Shanghai’s business district with the [relatively] new airport in the Putong area outside the city. While it has become immensely popular (and successful), it’s doubtful, at best, it every would have gotten off the drawing board without massive central government backing, backing on all fronts.

But these things can be done. Here in Bangkok we have a Skytrain and subway system, each independent but intersecting at two points. Both will be extended in years to come, and in fact, parts of the Skytrain are already nearing completion or under construction in the expansion phase. While these use more conventional technologies, they have visibly contributed to easing Bangkok’s notorious traffic. (Living in central Bangkok, I’m WAY too familiar with our traffic jams!)

I’d like to throw out another thought for consideration. Japan, for instance, has a major automobile industry (though not oil, of course), yet in a field leader in both urban and long-distance mass transit, often employing cutting edge technology. Perhaps it’s a bit off to blame GM et al for the resistance to expanding transport choices beyond cars.

Maybe Big Oil & Co. deserves even more “credit” than they already get for that. (Ditto our aversion to publicly funding in some way expansion of alternative energy sources, most recently exemplified in the recent failure in the Senate of a bill the House had passed that would have extended benefits for alternative energy providers. Sigh. Bush had vowed to veto it anyway.)

BTW, in a number of forums I’ve read comments that if it weren’t for our spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the wars in Iraq (especially) and Afghanistan, we’d have the money to fund alternative energy development. In terms of the raw number of dollars that would still be in the national coffers, that’s true, of course. (I don’t want to touch upon the debate over whether those wars are merited, run properly, etc. etc. etc. here — those are entirely separate issues.)

But *having* the money on hand is a far cry from being assured it would have automatically been directed towards alternative energy sources, reducing greenhouse emissions in other ways, and so on. For all we know, some of it might have been used to further sweeten the pot for Big Oil and other heavy hitters across the business spectrum (including outside energy and automobiles).

Mahesh, a closing personal comment to you: I appreciate your story, and in no way am I criticizing or attacking you. I might have written it a bit differently, but that’s not important. Thanks for the article — and keep it up.