There is no doubt that it would be nice to see some changes to our transport systems to get us away from the congested roads more. However, have you ever considered travelling in a train-like pod which gets lifted up into the sky?
The work on devising this possible new method of getting around has been done by students Ewan Alston, Andrew Flynn, Mason Holden and Martin Keane from the Glasgow School of Art and the University of Glasgow.
A Pod and a Manta Ray
The system is called Horizon and it all starts with a SkyStation. This is the local station where commuters would check in their luggage and then hop onto their pod, which would travel along a rail using magnetic levitation. Each pod would carry up to 48 passengers and they could all stay in their seats while the next stage of the journey took place; with a manta ray type aircraft picking up the pod and taking it to the section of rail where it can be put down to finish the journey.
The people behind this futuristic transport scheme said that one of the biggest reasons for coming up with it was the fact that there is currently a “lack of coherency” between the different modes of transport which are available to us. This plan is designed to cut down on travel time by providing a smooth interface between two different types of transport.
The students looked into the fact that walking to a departure gate at an airport can take up to 40 minutes and getting from a city centre to an airport can take as much as 3 hours. By breaking up big airports into smaller transport hubs scattered around the country they expect that fast transport would be more accessible to more people.
