Trackcars soon on the road

When environment minister Andreas Carlgren is talking green transport in California PRT is an actual alternative, and in summer will stand a test track ready in Uppsala.
"Trackcars [PRT] is no longer science fiction," said Magnus Hunhammar of IST, the Institute for Sustainable Transportation.

Maria Nilsson

Imagine the potential similar to a car, that instead jump to a small electric-powered vehicle on rails -- five meters up in the air. For that driverless car to come you press a call button, and then inside the carriage you are paying and typing in addresses where you will travel. Sound like some futuristic dream? This will soon be reality both in Sweden and in California.

Last week found IST, the Institute for Sustainable Transportation, together with environment minister Andreas Carlgren in California for that chat on the climate issue and creating interest in Swede environmental technology exports.

In the USA, California is going to stand up for radical environmental protection and has decided to greenhouse gas reduction of 25% by 2020, and there, as in Sweden, the transportation is a big emissions source. Developing more environmentally friendly transportation is therefore very important. This is an opening for PRT.

And interest is great. Part of a roundtable held in Sacramento between Carlgren and new lieutenant governor John Garamendi [Deputy Interior Secretary under Clinton] -- filling in for Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had a broken leg -- IST got to open with an address on PRT.

"John Garamendi is very interested in PRT and we received political support for the idea," said Magnus Humhammar, IST managing director.

Hunhammar believes the time is ripe for PRT.

"Interest from cities in both Sweden and California is sufficiently large. We are reaching critical mass. And there is now a big, solid PRT supplier in the form of Vectus, part of Korean steel company POSCO. Vectus is also first that IT technology claimed to handle 100,000 trips at once, he said, and continued:

"Vectus, in locating its PRT activity in Uppsala, now building a test track which will be ready and safety certified this summer. PRT is not longer science fiction."

In California, Hunhammar and IST founder Christer Lindström worked with several different cities, among them Santa Cruz, south of San Francisco, and several cities in Orange County near Los Angeles, which are in great need of a flexible and green traffic solution. Plans are to create sister cities in Sweden. Värmdö is a city in Sweden long committed to planning of large scale PRT.

"Instead of building out the six km blue line subway from Kungsträdgården, which is expected to cost $6-8 billion, we can have 100 kilometers of PRT for the same cost," said Hunhammar.

When it will become real in Värmdö is hard to say, but IST believes a pilot in a urban setting, perhaps in Uppsala, of a couple of kilometers another autumn 2009.

"2009 is Sweden's Presidency of the EU, and it is writing a new environmental program to succeed the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. At that time there will be something tangible to show," said Hunhammar.

At full scale push is going to start after 2016, and the first are surrounding towns around large cities that take action.

"Subways serve Stockholm's central city excellently, but we will come to a point of huge burden on the Central Station. Today increasing about 220,000 travelers per day through the Central Station, despite that for most there won't be flexibility there," said Lindström.

The follow up to the work in California will be a big international meeting in Sweden in September 2007, when representatives of California cities will be coming to participate.

"This is a serious commitment and now needs political back-up," Lindström said.