Letter from the Editor
The world is changing quickly. This is not new to anyone with open eyes and ears. What is new is the accelerating rate of this change. While at times baffling and dizzying, it is a reality which we all face. Accelerating change is as true for urban mobility as for teleconferencng and retail. We can[more]
PRT-Consulting Blog
- Date: 3 May 2012
- This page provides breaking news related to automated transit networks (ATN – an umbrella term for PRT and GRT systems, also know as podcars) along with links where available.
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Christer's Blog
- Date: 15 May 2012
- I have had the opportunity to travel many times to the Bay Area in California, and experience the Silicon Valley culture. From my tiny perspective of getting around in a more intelligent way it strikes me over and over again how such a supposedly intelligent set of people in this place are so extremely ineffective in planning for a smarter transportation system. The VTA light rail is underutilized, the roads are congested. There are very few spaces for pedestrians and bicycles, and a lot of spaces for parking. All you Apple/Google/Yahoo/Facebook "geniuses", what about cleaning up your local act? You guys have the resources, brains and stamina to endure a dramatic change into a much better transit system and smarter world. Good article about the problems from the : SF Chronicle
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About
Podcar.org is a site for information about sustainable transportation systems based on Automated Transit Network Technology.
Podcar.org is a trademark owned by Institute for Sustainable Transportation (IST, Sweden) and International Institute for Sustainable Transportation (INIST, USA).
Kompass has a new member from April 1, City of Sundbyberg. The city is looking into the possibility of extending and improving public transit using. CPRT in Minneapolis recently did a fund raiser and was very...[more]
The Advanced Transit Association is over 45 years old, but going strong. ATRA traditionally holds its annual business meeting in Washington DC every January when thousands of people are in town for the annual meeting of the...[more]
Podcar City 6 – Berlin
Strengthening Transit-Oriented Investment
September 18-21, 2012
Since 2007 the Swedish Institute for Sustainable Transportation and the California-based International Institute for Sustainable Transportation have together organized a yearly conference on Automated Transit Technology (ATN). These lively events have explored the use of sustainable transportation to achieve better urban life and attain more effective use of energy. The conference series has drawn a steadily increasing crowd of people interested in the transit-oriented development of modern cities drawing in viewpoints from elected officials, transit experts, researchers, real estate managers, system providers and related consultants.
This year IST/InIST has decided to reach out to a wider audience by placing the conference within the setting of one of the world’s largest rail events – InnoTrans, a biennial event in Berlin. It will draw on the fact that ATN technologies have progressed on several fronts, and there is strong interest in many project settings around the world. The aim is to collect project leads and to identify promising business models for ATN by directly speaking with elected officials, planners and real estate executives.
Theme and Goal
For the last decade, significant investments have been made, with many underway, to access and serve major transit centers using efficient rail, bus, bicycle, rental and pedestrian amenities. These strategies have a weak point – the need to create large parking structures near stations, thereby adding even more congestion and pedestrian-unfriendly landscape into these centers. The adjacent land needs better use with as high a quality as possible for both travelers and businesses.
Podcar City 6 will focus on how cities and land owners can create win-win situations by breaking the current car-oriented paradigm through a new approach to door-to-door travel that is seamless, comfortable, fast and safe. The conference will give examples -- existing and planned -- of transit centers as the main focus of public spaces and real estate development. Podcar City 6 will highlight the land values, finances and implementation of attractive urban settings that seriously challenge the car as the primary mode for both short and intermediate travel.
The rail industry needs Automated Transit Technology as much as ATN needs regional and intercity transit. Podcar Cities 6 @ InnoTrans aims to catalyze mutual benefits.
While many caution not to overpromise PRT, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) research scientist recently sketched up a winning concept by promising near-term jobs by way of a PRT solution to climate change. Christopher Fry convinced a panel of scientists that podcar visions are not only commercially viable, but also grossly beneficial for our overheating planet.
Prestigious, Independent Panel
A diverse panel of US scientists ranked his aggressive vision as the best strategy to fight climate change. They were appointed to judge ideas by the Center for Collective Intelligence, a group of researchers within MIT’s Sloan (business) school. Internet voting and commentary by thousands of people around the world also put PRT among top ideas. UN officials in NYC and Congressional staffers in DC will soon be briefed on these findings. What sparks will this set off in a world increasingly desperate to reduce oil dependencies?
MIT’s Climate CoLab’s project to find the best ways to ev[more]
In the southern Indian state of Kerala, the cabinet has “in principle" approved the creation of a public-private partnership (PPP) to build and operate a podcar network in its capital city of about one million residents. The name does not roll easily off the tongue: Thiruvananthapuram. The old name is a good bit easier: Trivandum – a city of many universities believed to have been visited by Hebrew King Solomon about 1000BC. The project was initiated by Ultra’s Indian partner Fairwood. The next step is for the state-owned INKEL to undertake a detailed study and report back to the cabinet “at the earliest”. More advanced plans for a privately funded network of 22 kilometers and seven stations in the northern city of Amritsar helped officials make this bold step toward mobility innovation. [more]
SHANNON MCDONALD
She is a talented architect with technological flare. She possesses a warm charm combined with a keen intelligence. She recognized the potentialities of podcars to transform the auto-addicted ways in which her native USA and much of the rest of the world is entrapped. She is able to excite students to explore the dramatically new possibilities that lie ahead.
Shannon McDonald now teaches at Southern Illinois University, the Heartland school that recognized Buckminster Fuller’s genius to take the concept of the geodesic dome to new heights. She has added her energies to ATRA events in the US, Italy and Sweden. Shannon helped organize two exciting workshops that were part of TRB Annual Meetings of the US Academy of Sciences.
Asked why she has turned her energies to PRT, Shannon answered, “I have long studied how cars and parking garages transformed American and world cities. Now I see the need and potential for this more sustainable form of mobility, and it is the duty of engaged architects to see it from the eyes of the user.“
Shannon now co-chairs the newly formed ATRA Committee on Research and Academics. We no doubt will hearing about her creative explorations of the frontiers of urban mobility.She has recently made professional presentations at AIA-IL, UCLA, TRB, TRF, PCI and TRANSED highlighting her work as Southern Illinois University as an architecture professor who now delving into new movement devices. She is active on twoTRB committees.
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