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Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand (newatlas.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (9 children)

Project founder Thorsten Försterling tells us that the team is working on a track-installed machine that will be able to lift individual pods off of one rail and place them on the other (without passengers in them at the time), keeping them from all collecting at either end of the route.

What the heck, can't you just have a Y at the end?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

on-demand pods that travel on existing abandoned railways.

They're reusing existing tracks.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Hmm, so your thinking is they're not allowed to modify the existing tracks at all?

It just seems like building and maintaining a machine that lifts these pods, that's gotta be a magnitude more expensive than a slight change to the rails...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I don't see why it'd be that expensive, it'd basically just be a fancy crane.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

I'm not saying that it's hugely expensive. I'm just saying that a Y-shaped rail with a switch should be significantly cheaper.

Particularly, moving parts are a pain for maintenance. These kind of systems, you want to operate for 20+ years and the less bearings there are to oil, the better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

They're probably marketing this as requiring zero infrastructure changes to attract buyers and investors. Just put the pod lifter at the end of the track and it's done.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah, that's quite possible, that they offer it for marketing. Maybe also to give municipalities an option to try out the system for a few months and see, if it attracts much interest. If it doesn't, you can just pack up the pods and cranes, and market it to the next city.

I was mainly confused how off-handedly this gets mentioned in the article, as if that was clearly the logical method for moving a vehicle from one place to another...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Look at the wheels, flanges on both sides.

I don't think that's compatible with switches.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I'm definitely willing to believe that they've got monorail-like flanges. That would probably help with stabilizing. But where the hell are you able to see a picture of the wheels? There's a few angles in the video which quickly show the wheels, but I can't actually see much anyways. 🫠

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

it's very visible in the first shot of this video where they do some test runs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2al1oFolWM

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