News: Read SkyTran inventor Doug Malewicki's invited Point of View paper, "Silicon is About to Change the World -- Again" in the November 2009 IEEE Proceedings. PDF    IEEE

SkyTran is a new transportation system in development at NASA Ames Research and other locations. It's a complete re-imagining of travel: vehicles that drive themselves on elevated "guideway" micro-freeways so light they can be supported by utility poles or attached to buildings. SkyTran will have about 200-MPG equivalent energy efficiency, twice the Automotive X Prize requirement. Its elevated guideways can be built quickly, without disrupting neighborhoods. They will cost much less to build and maintain than mass transit lines or freeways, but carry more people.

Using SkyTran

SkyTran vehicles will wait like taxicabs at boarding platforms above sidewalks or attached to buildings' upper floors (second thumbnail image above). You just sit down, tell your computer "driver" where you want to go, and relax. It merges onto the elevated micro-freeway and drives nonstop to your destination, then parks itself after you get out.

Benefits

With no engine, tires or batteries, a SkyTran vehicle is small, light and aerodynamic. It consumes 1/10 the energy of a car, even at higher speeds.

Computer-controlled SkyTran vehicles, mechanically locked to micro-freeways (with no intersections) above the traffic, will be much safer than cars. In emergencies, their brakes can stop much faster than a car, since they are protected from weather inside the guideway shell. Because of the closer spacing this permits, a single guideway has the passenger capacity of a three-lane freeway.

Yet a guideway's impact on the landscape will be tiny compared with a freeway's. Even the stations are elevated, so besides station stairs and handicap elevators, its footprint is just a row of utility poles. (See how long it takes you to pick out the SkyTran guideway and vehicles a block away in the bottom thumbnail image, an artist's scale rendering set at the Westlake Center in Seattle.)

Costs far below current freeways or transit will let even a megalopolis like Los Angeles put a SkyTran station less than 2-3 blocks from most residents. 20-MPG cars traveling on traffic-choked streets can be replaced by 200-MPG equivalent, silent and non-polluting SkyTran. Better quality of life and a cleaner environment! Businesses will draw workers and customers from a wider area and ship products or receive vendor parts in minutes throughout a city. City governments can eliminate traffic congestion with profitable systems that run without subsidies. Families' lives will get easier with parents' less-stressful commutes, clearer freeways, and safer neighborhood streets. Elders, people with handicaps, and others who don't drive (like young teens) will have new freedom to get around.

Status

SkyTran is currently under development. Contact Unimodal, Inc. if you are interested in playing a role in this development.