Country folk tend to like the independence offered by their cars, so how do you get them to use public transit? The Monocab system may be the answer, as it utilizes individual on-demand pods that travel on existing abandoned railways.

JUST PUT A FUCKING TRAIN ON IT WTF ARE WE DOING

Trains are expensive to run if you don’t have enough passengers (like in small villages).

FUCKING DOING OUR JOB AS TRANSPORT MODELLERS AND DOING A FUCKING COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS THAT SHOWS YOU’RE NEVER GOING TO GET FUCKING MODE SHIFT FROM RURAL USERS UNLESS YOU RUN A FUCKING METRO STYLE 10 MINUTELY SERVICE WHICH IS FUCKING UNFEASIBLE WITH THE FUCKING RESOURCES WE HAVE AVAILABLE.

IN THE FUCKING UK WE HAVE A LARGE NUMBER OF FUCKING ABANDONED RAILWAYS FROM THE PERIOD OF FUCKING COAL MINING THAT WOULDN’T HAVE ANYWHERE NEAR THE FUCKING DEMAND NECESSARY TO JUSTIFY SETTING UP AN EXPENSIVE AS FUCK SIGNALLING SYSTEM TO BRING THEM UP TO MODERN FUCKING SAFETY STANDARDS, ALONGSIDE REPLACING THE FUCKING RAILS, SLEEPERS AND BEDS.

IF INSTEAD YOU CAN HAVE A FUCKING PUBLICALLY OWNED FLEET OF FUCKING ELECTRIC ‘MINI TRAINS’ THAT PEOPLE COULD USE FOR INFREQUENT BUT NECESSARY TRIPS, THAT COULD REMOVE A FUCKING SIGNIFICANT BARRIER TO MODE SHIFT, WHICH WOULD BE PRETTY FUCKING RAD

androogee (they/she)
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Read the article, that’s literally the first thing they explain

Besides which, it’s very obviously a train if you just look at it. It’s a small monorail train specifically designed for this purpose using existing infrastructure.

People are never fucking happy.

Em Adespoton
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A train is a collection of rolling railcars propelled by one or more locomotives. These are individual self-powered railcars.

So no, there’s no train here. Just monorail pods that will get congested as density increases.

The whole concept of a train is that all the cars move together and the only congestion is at the switching yards, where it can be optimized.

Echo Dot
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Isn’t it better to have a train that runs when you want rather than having to wait potentially hours for the scheduled commuter train. Isn’t this better?

These pods are only used on rails with very low ridership. They would switch to a train if ridership increased.

Look at it this way: you can have a train that has a capacity of 100 people, but it only runs once a day due to the low demand, and only 2 people want to ride it at that time of day…Or you can have 10 pods, which do not require as much railway maintenance, and they can carry the 10 people who actually want to use this railway, completely on demand.

Yeah, a train is better if you want to move ten thousand people a day at peak hour. But this is a cheaper way to move ten people at different times across a day. And it’s a cheaper way of inducing the demand that would justify the more efficient kind of expansion.

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