The future flight of SkyTran may be answer to Triangle's traffic woesBy
JIM SHAMP 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"
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.
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. 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."
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