Driverless Taxi Pods

Welcome to Millennium City, home to the Indian headquarters of Google, Microsoft and Apple. With its ever-growing population of 2,376,324, Gurgaon has due to rapid urbanization established itself a flourishing tech hub with a lacking urban infrastructure. As the city is mostly run by private companies, it will be the first in India to debut taxi pods, or Personal Rapid Transit (PRT).

The pilot for the completely private project will cover a distance of 13 kilometers between New Delhi and Gurgaon, over a stretch of sixteen stations. Suspended from overhead rails, the pods are expected to transfer 30,000 people per day with an average speed of 60 kilometers per hour. The pods will ride at both regular as irregular intervals and can host five to six people at a time.

The construction works are scheduled to be finished within the year. The Indian government is currently inviting global investors to fund the PRT network. Shruti Rajagopalan, assistant professor in economics at Purchase College, State University of New York, commented: "The interesting thing about Gurgaon is that because there was a market for it, anywhere the government was lacking, the private sector came in and they provided the service".

The PRT network shows resemblances to the NASA partner startup Skytran, which is currently piloting in Tel Aviv. Later this year, Singapore will be expecting its first elevated tracks. On a smaller scale, similar pods are operated in Morgantown, West Virginia, London’s Heathrow airport and Suncheon in South Korea.

Source: Tech Insider