This post originally appeared on Orphan Road.
Hot on the heels of the proposed London PRT system, a Mesa, AZ businessman is floating a proposal to bring a 25-mile transit pod network to downtown Mesa:
Bullet-shaped two-passenger vehicles would be suspended from overhead tracks. Instead of riding on wheels or bearings, they would be elevated and propelled by magnetic levitation at speeds up to 100 mph in city, and 150 mph between cities.
About every quarter-mile, there would be a station. Passengers would climb to the boarding platform, pay for their rides, punch in their destinations and jump into waiting cars.
A computer would guide the cars as they merge into the high-speed upper rail and then slow to a stop at the destinations.
Eventually, SkyTran advocates say, a city could be covered with a grid of lines, making it all but unnecessary to use cars for local trips.
And you thought the Seattle Monorail was a pie-in-the-sky idea?