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How Personal Rapid Transport Works · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know
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Speaker 1: from how Stuff Works dot Com? Brought to you by
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Speaker 1: consumer guy at Automotive we make carbine easier. I'm welcome
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Speaker 1: to the podcast on Josh Clark, a staff writer here
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Speaker 1: at how Stuff Works dot Com with me is uh
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Speaker 1: the writer's editor extraordinary. Mr Chris Pallette, how's it going, Chris?
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Speaker 1: It's going great, Josh, thanks for asking. So, Chris, I
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Speaker 1: notice you shaved your goatee. It's startlingly different. Yeah. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I'm not used to the air conditioning on my chain,
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Speaker 1: but I'll get used to it. Well, we're not used
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Speaker 1: to it around the office. We're actually lamenting the loss
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Speaker 1: of it. We're sitting shiva over chris is goatee. We've
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Speaker 1: got the mirrors covered. But we have to soldier on,
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Speaker 1: don't we, Chris? Yeah? So I'm thinking we could soldier
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Speaker 1: on by talking about whether or not there's going to
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Speaker 1: be a new kind of taxi cab in the future.
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Speaker 1: What do you know about this? Well, I do know
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Speaker 1: that gas prices are going up and people are looking
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Speaker 1: at all kinds of alternatives, even something that might seem
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Speaker 1: like it's right out of one of those uh nineties
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Speaker 1: nine fifties art deco. Uh, this is the wave of
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Speaker 1: the future, like the wed Way people move her. So
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Speaker 1: what we're talking about is personal rapid transit or PRT.
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Speaker 1: And it's actually not a new idea. It does find
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Speaker 1: its roots in the fifties um an American urban designers
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Speaker 1: started toying with the idea. What it does is it
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Speaker 1: takes the the um the best of both worlds of
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Speaker 1: subways and taxis and put them together. Uh. It's personal
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Speaker 1: rapid transit because there's so many cars on this rail
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Speaker 1: line that you don't have to share with anybody. So
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Speaker 1: people who are unsettled by the homeless or are xenophobic
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Speaker 1: to a clinical degree can rest easy on this ride. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And it also takes you pretty much exactly where you
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Speaker 1: want to go. Surprisingly, it's less less to build than
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Speaker 1: light rail by a long shot. There doing one at
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Speaker 1: Heathrow Airport in the infamous Terminal five UM and it's
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Speaker 1: costs about sixteen million for a mile of track. Total costs.
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Speaker 1: Most light rail costs about forty million, which is amazing
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Speaker 1: that it's got it beat by that. Why don't we
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Speaker 1: have this installed everywhere? Now, Well, I would guess that
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Speaker 1: even though uh they're claiming that it is less expensive
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Speaker 1: than light rail, um, that there's just so much more
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Speaker 1: infrastructure involved in building a light rail system. You know,
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Speaker 1: from from what I've read and researching for the podcast,
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Speaker 1: the the cars we're talking about here for these PRT
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Speaker 1: systems are are small. They're they're like a you know,
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Speaker 1: a personal automobile rather than a big honking train, which
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Speaker 1: I'm sure you know costs a lot to build. Um. Plus,
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Speaker 1: the track would probably need to be considerably wider for
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Speaker 1: a light rail train, so you know, it sort of
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Speaker 1: makes sense that it would be a little bit more
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Speaker 1: cost efficient even with the number of stops going up.
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Speaker 1: But even with hard numbers, there's a lot of people
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Speaker 1: who aren't swayed. Um. Personal rapid transit systems have found
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Speaker 1: vocal opponents everywhere that they've been proposed. You watched The Simpsons, right,
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Speaker 1: oh yeah, okay, you've seen the mono rail episode. It's
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Speaker 1: it's one of my favorites. It is a great so
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Speaker 1: it has it all, has Leonard di moy apossums, it's
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Speaker 1: a from the music man. But really, when I was
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Speaker 1: researching personal rapid transit, I realized that the mono rail
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Speaker 1: episode of The Simpsons is a subtle indictment of PRT systems.
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Speaker 1: Um and while in the episode, Homer Simpson is the
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Speaker 1: conductor of the mono rail, Uh, what better metaphor for
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Speaker 1: a failing computer system than Homer himself? Right, that's true? Yeah,
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Speaker 1: and uh, that's one of the big criticisms of the
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Speaker 1: PRT system is is that you know what happens if
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Speaker 1: one of the cars fails, if you're on the same
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Speaker 1: track as everyone else, and especially if they're moving as
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Speaker 1: in a close proximity as it suggests that we will
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Speaker 1: be if we use these systems, it will be essentially
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Speaker 1: bumper to bumper. And they are in man they are computerized,
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Speaker 1: their computer driven, which is good because they can run
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Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day. But if they're unmanned, then
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Speaker 1: what happens when they stop? Uh, like you said, you've
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Speaker 1: got all the cars behind you stopped behind you. Uh,
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Speaker 1: it's it could be just a complete nightmare. It's like
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Speaker 1: being stuck on a roller coaster. But you know, you're
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Speaker 1: not at an amusement park. You're trying to get home
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Speaker 1: or get to work. Maybe they'll install horns in them,
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Speaker 1: so at least we can you know, have the satisfaction
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Speaker 1: of honking if you Yeah, that would be awesome actually,
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Speaker 1: But I was intrigued that they're being installed in some places, uh,
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Speaker 1: I think Sweden and Abu Dhabi, which is sort of
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Speaker 1: ironic considering that's they would have gotten the money from
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Speaker 1: that from oil. Yeah, yeah, that is ironic. But they
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Speaker 1: are starting to uh they're actually the the United Arab
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Speaker 1: Emirates and and do buying some of these other areas
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Speaker 1: are really starting to lead the charge on going green.
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Speaker 1: And the city called Masdar City, it's the development outside
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Speaker 1: of Abu Dat. They're they're aiming to become the first
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Speaker 1: zero carbon footprint city ever. And part of that is
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Speaker 1: the personal rapid transit system they're implementing. And this is
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Speaker 1: not a test. I mean, they're putting in a whole
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Speaker 1: stop uh system. So it's it's a huge deal and
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Speaker 1: there's going to be a lot of eyes on Abu
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Speaker 1: Dhabi to find out, you know, if this can really
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Speaker 1: work and if it will fail like people expect, or
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Speaker 1: if it could be the wave of the future for
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Speaker 1: taxis that's fascinating. It'll be it'll be exciting to see
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Speaker 1: you know that this may be a real solution. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: I hope so, because we're drowning here. If you want
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Speaker 1: to learn more about personal rapid transit, read will there
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Speaker 1: be a new kind of Taxicab? On how stuff works
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