Durham Herald-Sun March 12, 2000

The future flight of

SkyTran may be answer to Triangle's traffic woes

By JIM SHAMP
The Herald-Sun

The bullet-shaped composite plastic pod swoops down a graceful rail and comes to a halt beside an elevated sidewalk as its clone streaks in from the distance, whispers past at 100 miles an hour and disappears toward the horizon on another rail above.

Two passengers step out of the pod, one headed toward the entrance of Duke Hospital and the other walking down Erwin Road as two more pods slide into place single-file to deliver their passengers like hatchlings from futuristic windowed eggs.

 Two Duke University scientists wave their keychain "fast passes" 
Sky's the limit
More information on the SkyTran technologies and the company, including more artist's renderings, is available on the Web at www.SkyTran.net .
   

toward an automated scanner and settle into semi-reclining comfort in the forward pod.  As they close the gull-wing polycarbonate windows wrapping above and beside them, they've already input their separate Research Triangle Park destinations through a voice- recognition microphone. So the pod "knows" where it's going as it starts moving in mysterious silence up the lower rail, picking up speed as it merges into the flow of whooshing, wingless cockpits. These passengers will be at their destinations in 10 minutes.

Simultaneously, the scene is being repeated in residential neighborhoods, shopping centers, business complexes and sports arenas throughout the Triangle.  For decades, it's been the stuff of sci-fi comics, movies, books and dreams.  And it's been as elusive as Dick Tracy's two-way wrist radio.

But this is 2000. There really ARE two-way wrist radios now. And a former Chapel Hill resident now living in north Raleigh has joined two fellow optimists - an inventor and a bean counter - in betting their collective optimism on the ability of their unique SkyTran magnetic levitation transportation system to change the world. They say the technology is ready.  Now they need an investor to enable them to prove its utility and economy.

"I see this as a real-world application of super-efficient technologies that we can apply now," said Rob Cotter, 43-year-old Raleigh-based vice president and secretary of SkyTran. He said he'd like to see SkyTran capture the imagination of Triangle transportation planners, and install a demonstration of the technology at some site such as the Centennial campus in Raleigh.  But Cotter said some transportation officials, including some who have privately expressed enthusiasm over SkyTran, have been reluctant to publicly weigh in on the cutting-edge technology.

A lifelong eco-maniac, Cotter understands the difficulties in translating innovation into public action. He once served as vice president of the International Human Powered Vehicle Association. In 1988, that organization sponsored the first U.S. solar car race. Its president, Paul MacCready, also was instrumental in development of the pedal-powered Gossamer Condor and Gossamer Albatross airplanes. Cotter built a recumbent tricycle that went 60.88 mph, and produced a documentary for ESPN that included the Gossamers.

As senior vice president of marketing, Cotter is SkyTran's professional cheerleader. A former video producer turned public relations and marketing consultant, Cotter holds a degree in journalism and ethology (animal behavior) from SUNY Stony Brook.

Douglas Malewicki is the chief scientist and president of the SkyTran group.  A California-based aeronautical   engineer who specializes in design efficiency, Malewicki has designed and built world-record fuel-efficiency cars, jet racing vehicles, aircraft, high-efficiency recumbent bicycles and related items to test the potential and limits of efficient transport.

The CEO and president of SkyTran, Peter Wokwicz, is so far keeping his day job with the Chicago office of the financial firm of Deloitte and Touche, working on such projects as construction of the world's tallest building there. Wokwicz has degrees in finance and physics, said Cotter, and hopes to take SkyTran public with an IPO next year.  They push the concept with a near-religious zeal, citing the potential social benefits of SkyTran over virtually every other transportation system being discussed.  "We think it can take care of a lot of commuting hassles for a lot of people," said Cotter. "We think it should be embraced by tax-watch groups, MADD, the animal rights people who don't like all the road kill, environmentalists, pretty much anybody."

"The average commuter in Los Angeles spends 80 hours a year not moving at all, in stalled traffic, to say nothing of the time they spend in a moving commute," he said. "If I were an employer there, I'd like my employees to be happier, with better lives from perhaps the biggest contribution SkyTran can make - time. What's an hour or two worth to a person every day? Is that time they could be home with their spouse or kids, reading a book, in the yard, whatever?

"In Phoenix alone studies are showing even if a proposed light rail system moved at optimum efficiency, we can move about 300 times the number of people with SkyTran that they'd move with the light rail. And we can do it cleaner, cheaper, better in every way."

SkyTran taps a magnetic levitation technology called Inductrak, discovered by California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientist Richard Post. It's different from other forms of magnetic levitation technology that have been proposed for some people-mover systems, he said.

Unlike other magnetic levitation approaches being explored during the past two decades, the Inductrak system uses relatively inexpensive and simple arrays of permanent magnets, avoiding the superconducting coils and other complications  of some of the earlier approaches. Using magnets at ambient temperatures, the system operates somewhat like an electric motor sliced open and strung along a horizontal track, said Cotter.

By suspending the transport pod from a relatively simple extruded overhead track, SkyTran takes advantage of strong repulsive currents from coils inside the track to push up, or levitate, the connector atop the pod.  Since the car's suspension arm doesn't actually contact the track at operating speeds, minimal noise and resistance are produced. SkyTran has rights to small people-mover applications, while big versions of Inductrack are being explored by the California researchers at Livermore, under a contract with NASA, for launching space vehicles.

Computerized systems would monitor each pod's location on the entire track system, said Cotter, making sure everything keeps moving safely and efficiently. Pods headed different directions are mounted at varying levels, designers said, avoiding potential for head-on or intersection crashes.  Computerized adaptive cruise control, currently used on some luxury cars such as Cadillac, can maintain safe distances between SkyTran pods and apply automatic braking if needed to avoid rear-ending of one pod by another.
 


Image of a passenger carrying pod created by Brad Bowman/SkyTran.

   

Skytran would use air rights, rights-of-way along highways and in medians, down sides of roads, and even over sidewalks, said Cotter. Entrance stairways and ramps, called portals, would generally connect to sidewalks.

"You could make a system that would go from a spot in Chapel Hill to a spot in Durham, to several spots in RTP," said Cotter. "But later Duke might add a dozen or more locations, and it could go downtown, then to three or four locations in malls, maybe right inside them or to covered areas outside.  It's that accessibility that'll make it profitable. To put another quarter-mile in and add another stop would be minimal cost."

Cotter said an outside cost analysis has found that the rails could be constructed "for considerably less than we thought, putting it together on-site with a truck equipped similarly to that of a continuous gutter truck.  This automated rolled-steel system is part of our patent.  We're looking at somewhere around $2 million to $3 million per mile, hardware costs, for rail installations, not including rights-of-way, and pods will run about $6,000 each."  Because of the light weight of the entire system, support poles can remain relatively small and easy to install, said Cotter. And the track can also house other technologies, including fiber optics cables.

By comparison, Pittsburgh-based Adtran builds people-mover systems currently in use in several airports, reportedly costing between $40 million and $80 million a mile, including station amenities. The cost for such systems, however, is front-loaded, because after the initial installation the relative cost of additional track and stations is lower.

Adtran is one of the firms that has been in discussions with transportation engineers planning NCSU Centennial Campus transportation.   Cotter said the SkyTran option should offer not only economic and environmental benefits, but also safety.

"In this country right now, we have some 43,000 highway deaths per year," said Cotter. "That's more than virtually anything else. It's an astounding figure. And we all just live with it - except for those 43,000 a year.  Basically our system is so significantly messed up. We can put bus lanes or HOV lanes in, but these are minor band-aids. Our whole infrastructure, our parking lots, driveways, garages, roadways, is about moving cars, not about moving people. Assembly line technology has been used for everything from FedEx to manufacturing virtually everything. Yet we haven't done it to move people around. And that's basically what SkyTran is - get into a pod, tell it where you want to go, and in a short time get reasonably close, if not exactly where you want to go."

The SkyTran developers met this week with representatives of the Italian government and continue to meet with government transportation officials from throughout the world, said Cotter.

"I'd say 70 percent of the interest we're getting is from government officials from Korea, the Philippines, Italy, New Zealand, other places outside this country. Italy is dealing with urban renewal involving structures that are 1,000 years old and more. But they've been Yuppitized.  It's hard to leave town on roads built for chariots. They find that with SkyTran they can move around without tearing down ancient buildings and ancient roads. The Italians are very excited about this."

But most activity in the United States so far has involved high-tech corporations considering using SkyTran for transporting employees around their corporate campuses, said Cotter.   He said he wasn't free to disclose specifics on it, but "we're awaiting a decision right now from a large Arizona-based technology company that is currently using buses."

Innovation and public policy don't necessarily go hand in hand, especially in the transportation arena, said Cotter.

"Except for a few rare exceptions, mass transit has been a failure in the U.S.," he said,  "partly because it doesn't have to make a profit. So it can go on without justifying its existence. If it had to make a profit, it'd have to compete with the automobile. So mass transit has been stuck in this mindset that it doesn't make money, doesn't go fast, doesn't carry many people, and it's government funded. By and large, it's been allocated for the poor people of the country who can't afford an automobile.

"We feel that by working with the private sector, they grasp this much faster. They don't have to concern themselves with the grants and bond issues and things like that. If it looks like it'll work and make a profit, they can go full steam ahead. That's what we're counting on to get SkyTran off the ground. We're counting on the private sector to see this as getting people where they have to go, faster and more efficiently, and to eliminate a significant amount of pollution. They know that if they can do this and lower costs, that's a wonderful thing."