Investigation of SkyCabs Monorail System in Urban Regions

Abstract

The increased popularity of the private vehicle and the low budgets available to public-transport (PT) planners ha ve meant that PT patronage has decreased significantly from what it once was. This has led to congestion and pollution problems in many cities around the world. It is thus apparent that a new, high quality and sustainable PT system is needed to open the opportunity to attract more people to use PT. This work describes such a system called SkyCabs. The SkyCabs concept is comprised of many lightweight, driverless cabs running two ways on a single elevated monobeam. With each cab seating up to eight people, the aim is to create a feeling of personal travel, and by doing so increase the level of patronage on PT services. The SkyCabs system is investigated based on the following three criteria : a comparative analysis which involves researching and comparing system characteristics, a computer simulation analysing operational feasibility and an economic analysis which involves calculating and comparing the benefit-cost ratios for each mode analysed. A background section has been included to provide information on existing PT modes which have been compared to SkyCabs throughout this work. The SkyCabs concept has been deemed feasible within an urban context such as the North Shore of Auckland, New Zealand. This finding is based on a comparison with other options investigated and it is due to SkyCabs favourable characteristics, the high level of service offered and the low cost of implementation relative to return benefits.