Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Invests in SkyTran | Hacker News Reader

Google Chairman Eric Schmidt Invests in SkyTran

allindiaroundup.com

65 pointsJDDunn943 comments

Self-driving electric cars are going to transform our existing road network into one giant PRT system, without having to build expensive proprietary track.

Given that Google are leading investors in self-driving technology, I really wonder what Eric Schmidt sees in SkyTran!

So true. Why build dedicated infrastructure when electric cars and bikes are so much cheaper and flexible?

Roads are freaking expencive to build and maintain. These pods look a lot more useful than self driving cars or subways and likely cost less than highways.

Heavy car use, electric or not, encourage a much lower city density and an urban sprawl. Cars have to be parked somewhere and mixing cars and bicylists or pedestrians is never that great.

I believe in a good mix of metro services, bike lanes and on-demand autonomous cars. But a lot less private cars in the centre of town.

Exactly. Monorail systems of the 1980s never really had their breakout moment, either, likely for a lot of the same reasons. Dedicated, elevated right of way can get expensive, not to mention the cost of each elevated station with ADA compliance. It also adds quite a bit of blight, which is apparent in the sample renderings.

I've been comparing the coming evolution of transportation to the evolution of computing. Shared servers (equates to buses), dedicated servers (equates to car ownership) and cloud computing (equates to the idea of on demand autonomous vehicle networks).

I think the sweet spot really is having these atomic units that can act independently (off rails, stop anywhere without stations) but are a cooperative part of a larger network. It's going to entirely change transportation. It's the first alternative I've seen for America that can genuinely rival car ownership.

I would guess that stations are the real problem here. To make this kind of transportation system really useful, you need really lots of them.

The plus is the stations could be quite small, closer to the size of a bus stop than a subway station.

And the routes themselves could be much more diverse than a subway or light rail line, though probably not a lot more than buses.

The videos show them as small elevated platforms reachable by a single flight of stairs. Would be low cost as depicted but I see no way that it would get safety or ADA approval in that form. Add an elevator and it gets much more complicated. Have them dip down all the way to street level and there's a much bigger footprint required.

Maybe SkyTran is a good choice for countries without decent roads or an uneven landscape or no obligatory traffic rules?

Is India's road network really suitable for high speed PRT as-is? If not, the question becomes how SkyTran track compares to new highway, per foot.

Will self-driving cars ever get to India?

Much more energy-efficient, really cheap, doesn't take much space: http://www.skytran.us/benefits/

Goes up to 150 mph: http://www.skytran.us/maglev/

Seems to me it works pretty well in combination with electric self-drivers. Use skytran for lower cost and probably faster transit, hop on an electric taxi when your destination isn't near a station.

I've been a fan of this system for years now. Eyeballing the capsule design, I think it could go much faster than 150 mph. However, there would be tradeoffs in the infrastructure design. Think about comfortably travelling at 300 mph anywhere in the country with a 5 minute walk or golf cart ride to the nearest station.

For consistently high volume routes I could see it being superior to SDCs. You could move a lot of people out of a place with minimal waiting.

It could also be part of a network, with transfers to and from SDCs, which could be arranged to be waiting per passenger at the terminal.

Say you have a major sporting event letting out. These could run from the stadium to smaller collection points for SDCs. Less congestion, less miles traveled for SDCs. Faster, too.

These could be the city-wide movement system, and SDCs the 'last mile', so to speak.

It's possible they're more efficient in maintenance and energy per passenger mile, as well.

SkyTrain looks like it has similar cost/benefit profile as subways. It leaves the surface traffic untouched and transports on a previously unused level.

Building the tracks has to be considerably cheaper and faster than digging tunnels. Capacity is probably lower, but this should be able to travel on demand and 24/7. I also wonder if people will accept these car swooshing by their windows 24/7.

PRT is a great technology. I think it's a step in the right direction, away from cars and buses. When I first learned about the volume of people it can transport I was surprised.

There is work being done at North Carolina State University by some great minds to make this technology a reality. (I have no affiliation with this effort, I'm just aware of it)

http://ecoprt.com

Cities, business with parking decks or lots, universities, and lots of other things can benefit from this. It doesn't have to be a large scale effort right away.

Check out the simulations the EcoPRT guys have done: http://ecoprt.com/simulations/

I'm excited to see more people thinking about this problem!

I always feel like the hindrance to new public transportation systems is never the technology or the price. A lot of existing public transportation systems are superior to cars, like metros, aerial tramways, even buses. The biggest problem public transportation faces is the lack of adoption. And in my opinion this is because people never felt and never will feel comfortable about transportation if they have to abolish the basic "horse and carriage" metaphor. A moped is just like a small horse, more powerful and less heavy on maintenance - but otherwise the metaphor holds - same with a car. A train however violates the basic "horse and carriage" metaphor - you can't put a train inside your garage (stable) over night and it won't be just waiting for you once you leave your house. skyTran has the same problem - and I really believe if we want such technology to be adopted we don't need to improve so much the technology as we need to change its perception in the eyes of the people.

I agree with your comment. I lived in Raleigh, NC, USA for a long time (bad public transit) and now live in the Washington DC, USA area. The public transit here is much better and completely changed my view on all of this We actually have a metro and a reliable bus system.

In hong kong 90% of journeys are done using public transport.So the metaphor can be broken.

It is amazing what can be done when you commit to a public transport system. Tokyo a city with 13 million inhabitants have 40 million journeys per day on public transport. [1]

Despite being a huge city, the traffic on the roads in my experience is very light compared to many Western European or US cities.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway#Networks

My personal bone to pick with public transport is the absolute Sardine conditions. I would gladly take the metro if it didn't mean being confined to 10 inches of space for > 1 hour surrounded by jostling people. So something like the SkyTran would be very welcome.

A public transit system crosses the threshold from 100% useless to extremely useful at the instant that it's good enough to not drive.

Conservatives rig the game in most cities so that a small, infrequent, unreliable bus system is built. Then they can say, "Look, no one uses public transit here! This is a waste of money." And they're right, because it is a waste of money until you commit to a massive all-at-once expenditure in the hundreds of millions to billions. Which they won't ever let you do.

Government wants to half-ass things (excuse me, "pilot" them) but public transit doesn't work when it's half-assed.

Once self-driving taxis are cheaper than car ownership, that all-or-nothing dynamic goes away. Start out using the taxis, switch to cheaper public transport wherever it's available.

I agree. Public transport has to be treated like a network. A network's usefulness increases with the number of connections it can make. A half-assed public transport system will never convince people and if it's done right it's usually very very expensive. Switzerland has excellent public transport, but only because much of it is run by a national, government funded enterprise (SBB) and is considered a matter of national cohesion (hence splurging so much money is accepted by the public).

Public transport will always be inferior to cars in the sense that it goes from somewhere that isn't exactly where you are to somrwhere that isn't exactly where you want to be, at a time that isn't exactly now, in the company of people that you don't necessarily want to be with.

All of these are valid factors but when total trip time door-to-door is less than or equivalent to getting your car, driving (including traffic) and finding parking then the benefits are clear.

Similarly with total annual cost of transport. Parking and fuel can come at an high premium sometimes.

Notice - you see this happening a lot in big cities where congestion is best result by public transport.

True. But if your car can be self-driving then you don't need to park it, and if everyone's car is self driving then traffic becomes less of an issue.

Eventually I think public transport becomes obsolete, or else an incredibly expensive and rubbish subsidy for the tiny minority who can't afford cars.

I'm skeptical. I use the bus system at State at least four or five times per week and most people seem fine with it. I'm not sure if this will ever be implemented, although it is kind of cool to think about.

I'd love for technologies like this to become a reality, but it seems unlikely this specific implementation will be able to carry any substantial volume of travelers.

Same here, I saw their presentation video here https://vimeo.com/98497797 and I'm left wondering, their capsules are roughly the same size of a car, so how does that save any space at all?

"how does this save any space at all?"

It's in the sky?

I've got a longer answer if you can't think this through for yourself.

He does have a good point though. According to the video, the problem is we are building more roads to fix our existing traffic problem but they too get filled up, but int he video it shows skyTran works by being hooked to a overhead infrastructure. So you will still need to build overhead infrastructure to use ST. In theory this doesn't seem any better than adding more layers of highway.

The video also suggest it as a replacement of our existing transportation system as opposed to complementing our existing system (removes all the highways and just shows the ST).

So just by watching the video, I too don't see the obvious benefit.

The usual rebuttals are: Overhead rails are smaller and cheaper than highways for the capacity, standardized pods can be lighter and smaller-scale, and the automated guidance allows shorter timings for acceleration and braking.

However, when transit planners run the numbers, they come up against a different problem, which is that building this isn't really a substitute for a new metro line. The peak capacity is still more along the lines of what a highway can provide, and that wouldn't do much to improve the rush hour commute - plus, if they wanted a highway, there's always funding around for those.

So the PRT approach has mostly been implemented, to date, in airport systems and private campuses.

People can walk under it. Kids can play near them and it won't be dangerous. The ground is for humans who are walking, playing, or on bikes, for instance. Humans and cars interacting lead to lots of dead humans: http://gothamist.com/2014/10/15/there_have_now_been_200_traf...

The distance between the units in a transportation system such as railroads, freeways or this Skytran is called "headway". Headway is mainly determined by breaking time. They say the capsules can break to 0 in just 16 meters so theoretically you could have one capsule per 20 meters or so (although I doubt that would be safe or feel comfortable). That's 20 meters for 2 passengers, which means that you need 1 km track for 100 passengers. If the Skytran really goes 250 km/h you could move something like 250*100 = 25,000 persons per hour per rail if the capsules are full, or 12,500 if they are half full. That could easily compete with cars, trains, metro systems, buses etc.

But if the headway is really 100 meters, then we are down to 20 persons per km, and if the Skytran really "only" goes 150 km/h then we are transporting some 3,000 persons per hour if the capsules are full or some 1,500 if they are half full which is much less than a typical metro.

If we go by one capsule per 20 meters, we would use up to 12,500 capsules per hour meaning that we would have to launch another capsule with one or two passengers from side tracks onto the main track every .29 seconds in peak hour. And they would not be launched on the track from the same end station and unloaded on the same end station but from many different stations on the track. That's a job for a programmer to figure out how that's done safely but I don't see it happening.

And quite frankly, if you do have the backing of NASA and rich investors and this whole thing is so cheap and fast to build as they claim, why don't they just build a full scale version in some town somewhere? I see only animations and prototypes.

> why don't they just build a full scale version in some town somewhere? I see only animations and prototypes

They're building a demo 500m track in Tel Aviv. We'll see if it works as expected.

The Tel Aviv track was supposed to be done by the end of this year. Maybe Schmidt got inside info that triggered this move?

I wonder why they don't mention shipping goods. If I want to send a 5 pound box to an address in the city I live with (5 miles), with UPS it is $12.86 . If there was a way to ship with this system, that might be cut way down.

Of course, self driving vehicles will also compete in this space. I wonder who is going to invent the hybrid system? for short distances it is an autonomous car, and then for long distances it climbs onto a rail system like this (a mini version of today's shipping containers on rail).

I saw a talk about this at Yuri's night at Moffet Field in 2008 or 2009. I was really excited about it. My former university in Paderborn, Germany was also working on a similar system, RailCsb, that allowed the pods to form convoys and that way save space and improve aerodynamics. All really exciting. However, much time passed and neither project seems to be anywhere near actual deployment. I think on-demand public transportation is long overdue and the technology seems totally feasible. However, society seems to be too risk averse and the bureaucracy seems to kill any project like this. We can't even build a proper high speed train in the US!

This reminded me a lot of a website a friend shared on Facebook, and that looks to me a lot like a scam: http://skywayinvestgroup.com/en/

Anybody, has anybody first-hand info about this?

It's more a Shelbyville idea.

Google needs a transportation link between their new domed Googleplex and their private airport at Moffett Field. I was expecting a private Hyperloop, but this is more practical for a short run.

I wonder how much of this is PR-driven. Is Eric Schmidt spending his evenings and weekends searching for investments like this? Or do Google's PR people come to him saying: "You should invest in this. It will be good PR for Google."

(I have no problem with this project. I wish it success.)

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