Google Invests In Human-Powered Monorail System

Paul Graham wrote a while ago about the "Trouble with Segway" <a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html</a> He writes:<p>"The Segway hasn’t delivered on its initial promise, to put it mildly. There are several reasons why, but one is that people don’t want to be seen riding them. Someone riding a Segway looks like a dork."<p>The obvious problem with the new transportation capsule is that it makes you look like a cockroach in a glass jar.

What a waste of money. The money would be much better spent on two things that would work very well in concert:<p>1. separated bike lanes. I don't just mean painted lines on a street, which generally do more harm than good, but physical separation, like pedestrians get.<p>2. The Parisian "velib" system. This solves both the storage and availability problems.<p>After that, the only advantage of the monorail is the speed it attains, which is basically irrelevant when you're traveling 1-5 km. The huge disadvantage of the monorail is that it has very fixed paths.

What an astoundingly over-engineered solution. Much cheaper, easier and more flexible: paint bike lanes on all major streets.

How can this replace a crowded subway; that is, how can this move more than 1 million people in roughly the same direction at peak time?<p>It certainly seems more suited to leisure than the common scenario of lots of people commuting in the same direction.

Great. But in order to use it daily: Where do I put my rucksack?

"maximum comfort". ha ha. yeah that was my first thought. :-)<p>I'd love to try it. We drag around so much wait as we go places

I just loved this idea. Imagine this public transport system in a small city. Very very efficient. Governments doesn't invest in places where there is no revenue. So getting a feasible public transportation system in small city is almost impossible. This gives a hope. Ameen

It seems inefficient now. But don't most visions of the future include people flying through tubes like bank deposits?! Probably safer than bike lanes too..

Feels a lot like Segway to me - looks cool, but nothing people actually will use.

That would be a helluva tourist attraction; imagine if you could go over cliffs, under water, through caves, etc.

When it comes to urban transportation, looking at this contraption I can't help wondering... why not just get a bicycle?

Except for novelty value, what is the win/feature compared to normal bicycles?<p>This rail system must have a lot of new failure modes, compared to an asphalt bicycle path.<p>Cheaper to install? Safer? Less problem in rain?

not exactly aerodynamic?