A recent article, “Beyond the Stage Coach,” (The Economist Technology
Quarterly 3/10/07) says such a thing may be close to reality. Well, at
least to some degree. Actually, however, the article is a poignant lesson
in the hurdles facing those who want to make commercial reality of their
innovations, i.e., get people to buy it and use it.
Martin Lawson is the driving force behind Advanced Transport Systems (ATS)
whose goal is to give public transport it's biggest conceptual overhaul
since the era of the stagecoach. PRT still involves stations, but they are
smaller and never as closely spaced as in traditional systems.
Instead of big vehicles, passengers board small driverless pods for one to
four people. These pods travel along narrow tracks or elevated rails. The
stations do not lie on a main line, but on bypasses and access lines. In
theory, at least, the system is capable of handling more people at lower
costs than conventional systems such as light rail or bus systems. The pods
operate not on a fixed schedule, but on demand.
As the article points out PRT has been around as an idea
for more than forty years. All the classic obstacles to adoption of an
innovative idea are in this story. So too are classic cost overruns in
their implementation. But with improved new technologies available in
engineering and in computing, Dr. Lawson argues that “things are different
now.” BAD, the firm that operates Heathrow Airport, is apparently a
believer. It has not only ordered a PRT system to
carry passengers from the airport’s new terminal to surrounding parking
lots, it has also made a minority investment in ATS. There are other
supports and experiments as well.
There are also plenty of skeptics. The European
Commission has studied four possible proposals. It concluded according to
The Economist, “that hesitant local authorities are the only
significant obstacles.” Once again as I pointed out in a previous note,
innovation in which we live is our biggest challenge and our biggest
opportunity.
Courtesy The Eye For
Innovation, Innovative Insights from Robert Price, Former CEO
of Control Data Corporation.
