Don’t Shrink the Bus
Could Tesla’s Cybercab and similar smaller vehicles replace traditional trains and buses? Unfortunately, the idea of “personal rapid transit” has some big drawbacks.
An automated “personal rapid transit” vehicle in action at London’s Heathrow airport in 2016. The airport boasts one of the world’s only working PRT systems.
Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg
For many skeptics of public transportation, small is the next big thing.
Elon Musk, who once said that “public transport is painful, it sucks,” unveiled a concept for an autonomous “Cybercab” in October — the Tesla CEO’s latest take on what he’s called “individualized mass transit.” Each vehicle will have just two seats. The Vegas Loop, an earlier Musk-inspired, transit-like venture built by the Boring Company, deploys a fleet of human-driven Tesla cars (maximum passengers: three) in an underground tunnel beneath the Las Vegas Convention Center. Meanwhile, leaders of US cities like Atlanta and Arlington, Virginia, have envisioned fleets of little vehicles — typically autonomous shuttles or aerial gondolas — that whisk people to and from major destinations in near-privacy, without a moment lost to gridlock.