The Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems in Dubai are certainly a good first step towards mitigating traffic congestion. In a land where oil is abundantly available and cars are highly affordable, congestion is an obvious challenge. Enticing people to use personal rapid transit and other modes of shared mobility can remove personal vehicles from the roads. However, the biggest challenge is still first- and last-mile connectivity. While the Podcars help bypass traffic, they possess drawbacks similar to that of buses and tramways.
Moreover, the use of guideways and point-to-point nature of these Podcars limit their application scope. For instance, the Google car does not rely on guideways and can perform the same function of personal rapid transit pods. Of course, cost is a factor for such vehicles. Seating capacity of these vehicles is limited as well. This is where vehicles such as Navia from Induct happen to be more useful as they neither rely on guideways, nor suffer from seating capacity constraint. Interestingly, none of these have a steering wheel or other traditional controls. But that said, the "driver-out-of-the-loop" nature of the vehicles make them far more expensive as they need complex algorithms and also highly sophisticated (read expensive) sensors such as LiDAR. The next big step for Dubai should be to get rid of the guideways and adopt systems which enable first- and last-mile connectivity.
© Press Release 2014
