heathrow prts

[westcoaster]

these are being introduced at the new terminal 5 to ferry business class passengers to the car park, looks out of this world to me hock:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7147588.stm

suppose they work on gprs to get to and from the car park along the guided pathway.

 

[D306]

I saw the news video to that earlier. Look funky. Should go on one of those in the future if I can get a flight from Terminal 5

 

[Ascot]

Ouch be interesting to see how they work.

 

[westcoaster]

found the video
http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediaselector/...tm&news=1&nbwm=1&nbram=1&bbwm=1&bbram=1&asb=1
looks really intersesting to me.

 

[Sir_Clagalot]

I like the bit "No local emissions" !! But they will be producing some emissions somewhere in the UK as they need electrickery to move, and we all know that making it causes emisions!

 

[laseandre]

I like the bit "No local emissions" !! But they will be producing some emissions somewhere in the UK as they need electrickery to move, and we all know that making it causes emisions!

Not necessarily. They're battery powered.

 

[mrcheek]

Not necessarily. They're battery powered.

yeah, but youre gonna need to charge the batteries eventually!

 

[Darandio]

bit of a one for the environmentalists this one. I'm sure one of them has looked in to whether the power derives from coal fired power stations just to drive home their point.

 

[mrcheek]

environmentalists

really shouldnt use language like that on a public forum.

 

[Darandio]

What then? "environmental persons"
As ever, complaints on a postcard.

 

[Tom]

Environmental activists

 

[Darandio]

That could be more appropriate but hey, i saved bandwith by shortening it.

 

[Tom]

Thread cleaned...

 

[Craig]

bit of a one for the environmentalists this one. I'm sure one of them has looked in to whether the power derives from coal fired power stations just to drive home their point.

I expect the environmentalists will be more concerned about the pollution from the additional planes using the new terminal.

 

[Metroland]

I thought some of those environmental figures were highly dubious. PRT has been tried before btw, since the 1960s...but it's never really worked that well...you still get people all turning up at once so you still get queues.

With all that complexity, I doubt it will be that reliable. Indeed, there is one going in at Daventry, I suspect the Chavs will see to that. You normally get a lot of vandalism when there *are* drivers and plenty of staff about...

Doesn't look that fast or can move many people. They are talking about a 12 second headway with the Heathrow system at max. So that's 5 per min, carrying 4 people max. Or 20 people per min, or 1200 people per hour...about 1 Picadilly line train load. In reality it will probably be half a train load per hour. Not good for the queues at Heathrow. Looks like an expensive waste of money. But who knows it may provide an alternative to low/medium density bus routes one day.

 

[Nick W]

The point is that these vehicles can be lightweight, and almost minimalist, therefore they're already going to be more efficient to run. They shouldn't have to stop once they get going, and look pretty aerodynamic. Sadly it looks like they're simply rubber tired on concrete, which isn't very good given the advantages of steel on steel, or even hovering by magnetic attraction or an air cushion.

Remember that so long as the stop at the terminal has a very high capacity, the headways can be compressed by multiplexing vehicles from different stops and splitting them off at the terminal stop. Indeed with 1 second headways and perhaps a capacity of 4 people the system could easily beat the capacity of a 2 lane each side dual carriageway, in a much smaller space.

Still what's wrong with a continuously running cable car system maxing 30mph

 

[16CSVT2700]

Still what's wrong with a continuously running cable car system maxing 30mph

People will need to get on/off and the last time I checked not even linford christie could max 30mph