The passenger cars are proposed to be a single person pods that are blown through the tube network. The pods glide much like a toboggan using frictionless levitation on a permanent magnet track with banked turns and overhead diverter rails at intersections. The tube rail design would be totally centrifugal force neutral, using parabolic curves to maximize passenger comfort and safety.

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The network would be designed for a constant speed in urban area of about 35 MPH because of curve radius limitations, but higher in suburban settings where larger radius curves can be obtained. The speed can be varied between fan locations to allow meshing of urban and suburban systems.

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The forced air propulsion would be provided by in-line annular fans/compressors which propel the pods through the hollow core of the fan unit using a conservation of momentum principle. The fan skims off air upstream and injects a directed high pressure stream of air downstream of the impellers to power the momentum of the air circulating in the network. During start-up an adjustable annular nozzle will create a reduced pressure in the fan core to pull (induce) air through the fan zone to prevent short-circuit of the air through the fan. The fan nozzle design utilizes the same venturi principle used for decades in the air conveyor industry such as by Exair, and more recently by Dyson fans.

 

The present design capacity would be 2,800 pods per hour with 40 ft spacing between pods and 100% load factor. Because of the network concept, this capacity is multiplied by the number of tubes in the network. Each station feeds into 4 tubes, but because the pod launch rate is 1 per 10 seconds for each entry ramp, each tube can support the launch rates of 8 entry ramps; therefore, the system capacity may be more limited by the number of stations within the network.

 

As with all transportation systems, a load factor of 75% is achievable during rush-hours. All newer mass transit systems run with a much lower average load factor. Seattle light rail has a 100% load factor capacity of 12,000 passengers per rail track if it ran a train every 3 minutes, but runs with much lower load factors including fewer trains and passengers per train. Adding additional trains proves very expensive and problematic just for the few hours of high load demand.

 

Other system design goals include design simplicity, energy efficiency, safety, reliability, low maintenance, and self-sustaining costs. Reference: Technical Summery

 

The system would be highly dependent on local and central computer control systems for managing safety, speed, merging, exiting, pod storage/retrieval, and traffic control.