TITLE:
Investigation of SkyCabs Monorail System in Urban Regions
AUTHORS:
Avishai Ceder, Mitchell Roberts, Ryan Schermbrucker
KEYWORDS:
Monorail; Public Transport; SkyCabs
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.4 No.1,
January
16,
2014
ABSTRACT: The increased popularity of the private vehicle and the
low budgets available to public-transport (PT) planners have meant
that PT patronage has decreased significantly from what it once was. This has
led to congestion and pollution problems in many cities around the world. It is
thus apparent that a new, high quality and sustainable PT system is needed
to open the opportunity to attract more people to use PT. This work describes
such a system called SkyCabs. The SkyCabs concept is comprised of many
lightweight, driverless cabs running two ways on a single elevated monobeam.
With each cab seating up to eight people, the aim is to create a feeling of
personal travel, and by doing so increase the level of patronage on PT services. The
SkyCabs system is investigated based on the following three criteria: a comparative
analysis which involves researching and comparing system characteristics, a
computer simulation analysing operational feasibility and an economic analysis
which involves calculating and comparing the benefit-cost ratios for each mode analysed.
A background section has been included to provide information on existing PT
modes which have been compared to SkyCabs throughout this work. The SkyCabs
concept has been deemed feasible within an urban context such as the North
Shore of Auckland, New Zealand. This finding is based on a comparison with
other options investigated and it is due to SkyCabs favourable characteristics,
the high level of service offered and the low cost of implementation relative
to return benefits.