Pods that you summon whenever you need them on Smart Green Travel with Jerry Hart
Pods cars at Heathrow Airport near London.
“Mass Transit Sucks!” says Bill James from Jpods.com. I had asked him if the new futuristic Jetson lookin’ PODS slated to roll out in San Jose soon, defeat the purpose of Mass Transit.
You decide if the way we travel in mass is truly taking you where you want to go, when you want to go, non-stop.
Mass transit is a clunky version of P.R.T. system. San Jose is hoping to start building connections to local transit hubs and hotels using PODS.
Just get in the car, punch in a destination and the pod car travels directly there without stopping at other stations along the way. An advanced control system ensures each pod car follows the fastest route between origin and destination without bumping into other cars on the system.
Pod cars are automated vehicles that carry up to six passengers who are traveling together to the same destination. The cars ride on dedicated guideways above or alongside automobile and bus traffic. Soon this will be one of the alternative ways to get around While many sensible people drive their own cars and have insurance with a site like rac.co.uk, as long as you have a computer keyboard you will also be able to choose to travel in one of these new pods.
Propulsion is provided by an electric motor, and the car rides on small rubber tires. Imagine a very posh golf cart, but without the steering wheel. Navigation is entirely automated through a computer control system.
Because of the reduced carbon pollution and lower operating costs compared with traditional bus service, proponents 
envision widespread use at airports, urban centers, office parks, shopping malls and tourist attractions. Many airports offer automated people movers: driverless train cars linked together that move passengers between parking lots and terminals, stopping at every station on a constant loop. By contrast, pod cars move only on demand, offering point-to-point service with no fixed schedule. Either a car is waiting for you when you step up to the platform, or you can summon one from the control panel at each station.
In California’s Silicon Valley, San Jose has just begun a yearlong study to evaluate the use of a P.R.T. system around San Jose airport, with connections to local transit hubs and hotels, said Laura Stuchinsky, the sustainability officer in the city’s transportation department.
San Jose is anticipating population growth of a half million people over the next 30 years, so an automated pod transit system could certainly improve quality of life in the city – plus generate thousands more clean-tech jobs — an opportunity that the JPods company is vying for:
“We’ll do it on our nickel. We’ll build this on private capital. We just need right-of-way,” said Bill James, JPods.
“One of the advantages of this automated transit network is that it offers a lot of flexibility. It’s much less expensive than traditional transit. It doesn’t serve the same needs as high-speed rail or BART. It’s a complement to those systems,” said Stuchinsky.
The city is in the exploratory stages of a public-private partnership, reviewing proposals from 18 companies from Silicon Valley and around the world. A four-person pod would travel on elevated guide-ways, about 15-feet above the ground. The cost would be about four-cents a mile.
“In three years, we could deploy out 20 percent, take 20 percent of the cars off the road, and save the average working family $2,000 a year,” said Bill James, JPods founder and president
Part 1 run time 26 minutes
Smart Green Travel with Jerry Hart
Part 2 run time 26 minutes
Smart Green Travel with Jerry Hart
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Hi Amanda, Thanks for your email and happy Monday. Allow me please to run this by my editor of the book and see what she thinks of your terrific progress thus far. Back soon Really is a pleasure to have met you and already productive in our endeavors to help get healthier food in schools. Sincerely, Jerry
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