Current Awareness Bulletin - 11th August 2010
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| 11 August 2010 6:00PM | #1 |
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Current Awareness Bulletin - 11th August 2010Are travel pods the future? A cosy space for you and your family to travel without worries? Or will the Utopian ideal break down if you have to share a pod with a bloke who’s bought along cheese and onion sandwiches in a plastic bag?
I actually have no idea how the thinking on travel pods is developing or whether you even share them or not. Which is why I’m looking forward to The Personal Rapid Transit Conference (PRT@LHR 2010) at Heathrow next month. This 3-day event, from 21st to 23rd September, will look at the latest thinking on travel pods, and give the opportunity to ride on Heathrow’s own new system. As well as learning about Heathrow’s system you can find out about ‘Masdar: Modelling a no car city’ and ‘Roles for PRT in a Large, Low Density Conurbation’ The conference is organised by our sister organisation, PTRC Education and Research Services Ltd, on behalf of ATRA Europe and is designed to demonstrate how PRT can move forward to become a major force in transport and the urban environment. Full details here I really could have done with a travel pod system recently. I’ve just got back from an ill-deserved holiday. We thought we’d use home as base and make forays out to various places such as Hampton Court, Hereford to see the Mappa Mundy, Skegness and Birmingham’s Bull Ring in the car. It seemed like a good plan at the time. However, an hour-long jam outside Boston on the way to Skeggy soon had Our Sam militating against the whole scheme. How many times can a seven year old ask: ‘How many minutes is it now till we get there?’ The answer is a number no computer has ever yet counted to. It occurred to me as Jane the Sat Nav cheerily mentioned that there was traffic queuing ahead, that some kind of Star Trek like teleport system is long overdue. ‘Beam to Skeggy – it’s so bracing’. But actually I’m a supporter of the view ‘It’s better to travel than to arrive’. I love taking a train journey and seeing the changes in the countryside; peering into peoples’ back gardens (there really are a lot of Little Tikes Cozy Coupes in the world) and seeing church spires in the distance. We abandoned the car idea and I renewed the family rail card. Bliss. Except it’s remarkable how excited a seven year old can get playing I-Spy. And how competitive. Our Sam didn’t believe I really had seen a pink house before him – and the whole carriage knew about it. A wee travel pod with just the excitable Jinks family aboard might have been better for everyone. Most of our jobs revolve around transport. Would we prefer a world without trucks and trains, in which goods and people just materialised where they needed to be? Given the choice between cruise liners and jets, people made a similar choice back in the 50s to abandon a seriously pleasant but slower form of travel in favour of speed. Would we make that same decision now about our vehicles or would we lose too much? If getting that load of biscuits out of the DC and into the stores is a priority we’d probably plump for the teleport. But hey, we’d miss the challenge. Do travel pods represent the future or might transport develop in wholly new ways? I’d love to hear your views. David Jinks
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