Comment on Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand

Butterbee@beehaw.org ⁨6⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Yes Louis Brennan designed a gyroscopic monorail in the early 1900’s but there’s a reason it didn’t work out. Every car needs its own gyroscope which is a lot of dynamic components that need maintenance. A regular two rail train is much simpler and cheaper to operate. The idea these techbros have that everything is made better with individual pods is pretty wasteful when we already have better and cheaper solutions to virtually every problem they have tried to invent for us. Are we even super concerned about rural folks taking transit? By definition they are a small portion of the population and have the greatest need for personal transport. Where we need transit adoption is in urban areas with large populations who all want to drive their personal 2 tonnes of plastic and steel right into town and park it (for free obviously) in their own little parking space.

A gadgetbahn like this will only serve a limited population and won’t be able to tie into the existing transit network. There might be niche situations where it’s not a terrible idea but it is not a good generalized solution.

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