SocialImpediments
From SkyTran Implications Wiki
The SkyTran system is an elegant engineering design, but it ignores some important social norms, and I think these have to be addressed for the system to succeed.
0 People would rather sit side-by-side, and travel in groups. 00 No parent would put their children in another car. 00 A pair will not want to ride with one behind the other. 00 A group would prefer not to be split up. 0 People like their cars. 00 People like to store stuff in their car. 00 Cars are a statement of status. 00 People like to personalize their car (PimpMyPod).
As a commuter, I'd take SkyTran over any other option I know of. But if I'm going out with some friends, it would be an unwelcome disruption of our time together to pile into separate cars, or to be in a car with a friend but be unable to face them. And I just can't imagine using the system as described to take three kids to the museum.
I recognize that the economics of the system rely on standardization and on some severe engineering constraints, but human factors have to be part of the engineering, too.
Do I have any proposed solutions to the issues above?
- For a start, I think the seats should face each other.
- I also wonder if the seats could be widened slightly, and made in an arc, such that two friends could squeeze into each seat if they wanted to. This would increase the maximum load and the width of the vehicle, of course, but it wouldn't double the width. I wonder whether a larger load can't be compensated-for by increasing the spacing for the loaded vehicles.
- Another configuration, albeit with potential crash-safety issues, would be a bench seat arranged so the riders face sideways to the direction of travel.
- Not all vehicles have to be the same size, they just all have to fit into some envelope allowed by the design of the terminals and the railway. Maybe a group has to call for a special vehicle, and wait a few extra minutes for the privilege. (see PimpMyPod)
- Personally-owned vehicles could fit on the system, too. The issue to address is where the vehicle is stored. It's not hard to imagine a remote garage where personal and special-purpose vehicles are parked until called for.
- As a parent I wanted to address some of these issues. I have two kids, 7 and 9, and I would have no problem putting them in a pod with a gameboy to go visit their grandparents or go to soccer practice as long as there is a failsafe system so that the door will only open at the correct destination, or someone who is authorized can pick the kid up. If I needed to travel with both kids, I'd pop the one who's in the most need of alone time in one pod and then go with another child in the other for some one-on-one time. I would not put a kid under, say, the age of 5 in a pod by themselves-but you're not allowed to send kids that young on planes by themselves, either. Parents currently put their kids in the backseat, so there isn't a lot of side-by-side conversation and travel. I would have loved to take my kids to the museum in this last time I took three kids to the museum, the two girls CONSTANT chattering was giving me a headache. I wouldn't have minded shoving them off in a pod right in front of mine and letting them enjoy their talking without having to listen to comparisons of different Hanna Montana songs. If they're old enough to have a cell phone (both my kids have cell phones) then they're old enough to wait for me to get out of my pod behind them. I also let them go to the bathroom on their own when I'm at a grocery store or gas station, I think this is about the same level of independence. If I had, say, a toddler and a baby, the toddler could easily go in the back seat with some toys and the baby in my lap.
- The pods would be a godsend to parents who are divorced with joint custody. Knowing that you can safely drop your kid off and that the other parent will pick them up without having to meet someplace, or even worse drop the kid off at a police station for 20 minutes to make sure you never see your ex, would be much simpler and safer. I hate having to deal with my husbands ex wife, and we're court ordered to do custody exchange at a gas station, which is an improvement to the last court order, which specified a Starbucks.
- Most travel in cars is done with a single person. Since the trips would be fairly short (at 200 miles an hour, even a trip from Dallas to Houston is only an hour) a backwards facing front seat would probably be less popular- people like looking out windows where they are going, and if you notice in trains people tend to cluster towards the front windows and try to sit facing forward. Having the front chair rotate-able might be interesting, but can probably wait until the second or third generation of pods. A seat that faces the door, or just a bench that faces the door, is also probably do-able but would do weird things to the weight balance, and probably cut back on the energy efficiency of the vehicles.
- Most of the time when I travel with groups of people we split up into separate cars anyway, I don't see how the pods would be a problem, especially since going in a group to the same station would eliminate the ever-so-annoying one car gets lost syndrome.
- I like my car, a lot. I've named it, and I paint it with Tempra paint with my kids every so often. I do not like the payments, I don't like the insurance, I don't like washing it, and I don't like the maintenance. I hate getting the oil changed and frankly, we have three cars in a three adult household and are constantly looking for ways to get rid of a third car because it's expensive. If our city had a fully functional pod system we would probably cut down from 3 cars to one car, or even use one of the rideshare or carshare programs in our city instead. This is the same argument people used with horses, people loved their horses too much to get rid of them for a car that could never love them back. Turns out the people who decided to keep their horses had a real, genuine love for the animals and most people were content to switch over. Let the people who genuinely love cars- and thus, are much more likely to take excellent care of them, which will reduce their emissions- keep their cars. My car is the second greatest expense in our household budget and when you combine all the cars for our family, the cost to keep them going is substantially more than our rent-and that's just payments and insurance, not gas or maintenance.
- I think that all pods should have the same external dimensions, or pretty close to it- but there should be some variation on internal configurations. That's also something that would probably be worked out for the best in subsequent versions, not in the initial release.
