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Published: 2011-09-28 02:03:30 +0000 UTC; Views: 1867; Favourites: 24; Downloads: 85
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Description
I was riding the bus the other day, and a bunch of things came to mind:1. I hate riding the bus
2. I hate how I sometimes have to stand and there's not enough room for me to carry stuff.
3. I hate how the bus only sorta goes where I need it to, and then I have to drag whatever I've just picked up with me.
I have a car, but I use public transit to get to work, because parking is stupid expensive around here. It got me to thinking- what if there was a way to combine the bus and a car?
This is my Podbus concept. The basic idea is a two seater electric car that is useful for toodling around at low speeds in the city. When it needs to travel longer distances, like for the morning commute, it hooks up to a larger tractor unit that is diesel powered. This uses induction to transmit power to the little podbus units, and with an autodrive system the "pod" drives down the freeway, taking up roughly the same amount of space as a normal bus.
When you get to the destination stop, the pods separate and you can drive them directly. No more waiting for the bus in the rain, cold, or snow!
Art Notes:
Drawn in PaintTool SAI. I'm sure there are flaws with the idea. Let me have my dream for now. It's back aboard the noisy stinky crowded bus tomorrow (and then onto ditto for the train).
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Comments: 20
You don't need to use induction - just use "regenerative braking" and have the truck drag them. I wonder if we'll ever see this! I expect we'll be seeing automated road trains on the motorway before super long.
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I suspect there are several ways to transfer power- I just picked induction so that the pods wouldn't need a physical connection. As for road trains, it might not be a bad idea sooner rather than later- they could be very safe, especially for long range or mountainous routes.
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Awesome concept ^^. GM has nothing on this lolz
It looks like something you could use in your Colony 12 story ^^
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Thanks! I was thinking of including it in my space station designs- perhaps a line of similar vehicles. I think I'd tweak the basic design for that purpose, however (like using regular doors).
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Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! It's not a fully formed idea, but maybe a direction to go in. Take the "mass" out of mass transit- but only for the rider.
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Interesting idea. Have you ever seen the anime, eX-Driver? They used the idea of generally-available electric cars with an automatic drive system. You just went to the parking area, picked out an available car, climbed in and told it where you wanted to go. Off you went, and the car did all the driving, leaving the passenger(s) free to talk, read, etc. until they arrived. Of course, the system relied on some updated infrastructure, active roadway markers, etc., but it took the place of cabs and busses, and people could still own their own if they wanted. Of course, they had problems, too...hence the existence of the eX-Drivers.
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I know about the eX-Driver idea, but mine is a bit different (admittedly, I haven't really watched the series). The first difference is that the owner keeps the car in pretty much all cases, rather than renting one from a parking area (though I expect rental companies would probably offer them with similar restrictions as now). That might work in Japan, but there are too many people here who have no appreciation of hygiene or not VANDALIZING THE GODDAMN BUS SEAT GODDAMN YOU AND YOUR LIGHTER. The second difference is that autodriving only occurs in "bus" mode (the tractor unit has a driver), and the drivers drive normally at all other times. This way we don't need to update the roads, which minimizes infrastructure impact and cost.
My expectation is that any new transport tech must be as non-disruptive as possible with respect to infrastructure costs, or it will never take off.
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Yup, early adoption will require things like this to be as minimally invasive to the current infrastructure as possible. Changes can be made gradually as part of scheduled maintenance, and newer systems can be developed to take advantage of such upgrades.
You're right about dealing with things like vandalism and the like, though I also see potential issues with convincing enough people that they HAVE TO buy a particular vehicle to be compatible with this new system...it's almost as bad as infrastructure upgrades, in some ways. The problem with these sorts of things is that they require certain assumptions to be made, and certain compromises that need to be made as well. Not that they aren't good ideas, but you would still need sufficient "buy-in" to make them work.
Another difference between Japan and North America is that Japan has "grown up" with mass-transit, whereas North America has only had it in limited areas. This is due more to the layout of the land, as it were, particularly in area (there's so much LESS of it to cover in Japan). This one fact by itself makes a HUGE difference in the practicality of mass/rapid transit systems.
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As long as the cars met certain basic specs (like charging locations, speed and dimensions), any number of companies could make them. It's not that other modes of transport would be totally replaced by this system, but rather that it would act in a supplementary mode. That way, people don't have to buy the pods if they don't want them, and people who do buy them enjoy the additional benefits of the podbus system.
For another interim factor, we already have hybrid buses on our streets. These could be upgraded with an inductive charger at the rear, and an autodrive signaller. That way, a few pods could trail behind a regular bus.
I speak from a somewhat biased perspective, in that my city has the second highest ridership for our Light rail system in North America (only behind the Monterrey Metro in Mexico), with a ridership of over 250K per day. Even so, the pod concept reduces some of the mass transit concerns that normally present themselves- the biggest being the infrastructure buy in.
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That's a reasonably neat idea. The only real drawback I can see, compared to a regular bus, is that it would only work efficiently if all the pods were hooked up at one end of the line, and travelled to the other end of the line together, before going their separate ways – otherwise, having to unhook one of the pods anytime someone wanted to get off could be awkward and time consuming. It would certainly work very well on specific routes, where a lot of people are going from Suburb X to Downtown in the morning, and back again in the evening.
It would also be nice to have a little electric car to tool around the city or the neighbourhood, without having to face rush hour highway traffic. (I personally cringe every time I see a Smart Car go by on the highway. They're probably safer than they look, but still....)
Oh, one other problem comes to mind: Wouldn't parking still be stupid expensive?
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The pods aren't hooked up physically- they receive power via induction charging and use autodriving to remain in the "bus" formation. This means that they can separate when needed (at any point in the journey, even in case of an emergency).
As for parking, one of the reasons it's stupid expensive is a policy decision- the powers that be here don't want as much road traffic, so they raised parking prices. Problem is that mass transit still sucks (and here come the mass transit defenders!), so most people just put up with the raised prices. With the podbus, there's an incentive to reduce parking prices- and also, the pods take up much less space parking wise.
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Ah, right you are. My fault for not reading carefully the first time through.
I always figured that parking prices around here were high because it's a big source of revenue for the city. If they really wanted to discourage a significant number of people from driving, they would charge a lot more (maybe enough to actually pay for decent mass transit, though whether they'd spend the money on that is another question), but it would be political suicide. Maybe things are different where you live.
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Funny, I had a similar idea, just not in the pod or bus concept. It was more like a straight train.
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I saw some neat train ideas, but I thought the big problem would be interfacing the road with the tracks/maglev system. I guess my concern is that the roads already exist, but tracks might have to be put in. That might discourage use of the system.
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Right, but I meant in car alignment.
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Very cool. If it can get to my house and if it does not cost me much, I would definitely use on a daily basis.
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Well, my guess is that it would probably cost less than an ordinary car, and less than an ordinary electric car, but I'm not sure it could be really cheap. Maybe a rental would work.
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