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Lastday, Capricorn 29s, Year of the City: 2009. Carousel Begins.
Artist rendering of the proposed Skytran design in Seattle.
by Chris Jones
So, you remember that old 1970’s movie, Logan’s Run, where Logan and Jessica 6 take a space shaped monorail pod thing to the bad part of the dome where they’re promptly assaulted by sassy gang members speaking the hip lingo of tomorrow’s youth? Well, according to today’s Examiner, it looks like everyone’s favorite public agency, the MTA, may be considering ripping out all the Muni buses in town and finally moving public transportation into the “Space Age” with our own Logan’s Run style public transit system just like we deserve. OK, not really. Apparently, the MTA recently entertained a pitch from Mountain View based Unimodal, Inc., proposing the installation of their SkyTran personal rapid transit (PRT) system as a total solution to the never ending problem of dragging people up and down Geary Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue.
The SkyTran system consists of the above mentioned pod thingies, just big enough to fit two people (i.e., you and your sweetie, a prostitute and her john, Gavin and his hair, etc.), that are propelled along a fixed guideway using newfangled maglev technology from deepest space. Theoretically, the pods can reach speeds of over 100 miles per hour and, unlike buses, will show up to cart you and your plus one to dinner and a show whenever you please. Just ride the elevator to the PRT platform, press a button, and presto! Your own PRT pod arrives, free of smelly poor people and words like “jive turkey” scrawled all over the walls with a black magic marker.
Of course, the wee problem with such a system is that a real PRT system has never been built anywhere on Planet Earth. The closest they’ve come to constructing one of these things is a rickety old go-cart version at some university in West Virginia. This, however, has not stopped plenty of visionary politicians up and down the state from promoting this thing as an alternative to practical transportation projects. For example, noted Sonoma-Marin Area Rapid Transit (SMART) train skeptic, Supervisor Judy Arnold, has been pushing the SkyTran PRT system in Marin County for a few years now.
Oh, and sorry, you are not allowed to point out that this PRT looks like an overglorified ski gondola. That automatically sucks all the futuristic vision out of this idea, which, as you are all aware, must be 95 percent of any idea ever entertained in San Francisco ever. No futuristic vision, no project. Sorry for you.