Donald Noble's Website

Is this the future of transport? Engineers in Paderborn, Germany are working on an automated transport system, that could use existing rail networks (with some modifications) to run individual ‘Railcabs’ that take you to your destination without having to change trains. Likened to the internet, with great numbers of these vehicles moving autonomously along the network, picking the best route to the destination, forming chains to reduce wind resistance, and then actively switching to another route at junctions. Read more at Spiegel Online Internet on Wheels: German Company Engineers Driverless Taxi

An interesting concept, and hopefully one that gets funding, especially for rural areas.

John Armitt, the out-going chief executive of Network Rail, has claimed that transport planners should not always opt for a conventional train service in order to move passengers. Which neatly ties in to this sort of system.

There may be environmental benefits too, as clunky old ‘heavy rail’ is not very efficient for low numbers of people. Transport Secretary Douglas Alexander is quoted as saying: Here is an uncomfortable statistic: if 10 or fewer people travel in a Sprinter, it would be less environmentally damaging to give them each a Land Rover Freelander and tell them to drive.

Lets just hope there isn’t a new Dr. Beeching before they can develop this further.

This entry was posted on Sunday 14th January 2007 in Engineering and tagged Engineering, environmental, Europe, future, transport. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.