Avoid Interaction With Other Humans in New Train Design

looks gleefully claustrophobic. and how are the people on the platform supposed to know where there are open seats? i mean, i take the NY subway all the time and it's nice to be able to move down the platform when you can plainly see that the next car down has more empty space in it.

..and of course, there will be a TV in there, which will bombard the passenger with advertisements. Ah progress!

Seems really difficult to pull off. What about couples that want to sit together? Wouldn't you only be able to load into one side of the train? As per chopper's comment, I think the hatches could open up if no one was sitting there, but still, this doesn't seem practical. It also seems to add more moving parts which means more problems.

While I agree that this design is impractical and just plain silly...I understand where the feeling of public transit being to public comes from. When stories like the recent Greyhound incident here in Canada get plastered all over the news you start to get scared of riding with a bunch of strangers who have who knows what issues and carrying who knows what kind of stuff. Not that the majority of public transit riders ride in complete peace...but the media doesn't exactly zero in on uneventful days. Know what I mean?

Trains are actually inoffensive to sit in. They are pretty much always relaxed and the people around you add to the spectacle of the journey. I don't see this as a 'solution' to a design problem, so much as a non-problem. Underground trains are however pretty unpleasant, but a coffin on wheels wouldn't tempt me.

The idea people can't do 'public' spaces shows how being so very very private is rotting society to the core. When did we all turn into obese, risk averse cowards?

Looks no more claustrophobic than a small car. I'd prefer to face forwards though. As pointed out sometimes couples or friends do want to sit together however...

If public transport guaranteed me a set (like this does) and I didn't have to put up with being surrounded by people I may not like (eg drunk people, yobs, screaming kids) then I'd be far more inclined to dump my car and use it.

So for me, this sort of concept *is* the way forward...

I shudder to think about how some people would use these cabins as a stall of another kind. I mean, I am sure we all took elevators before that smelled like a toilet. Getting on board with number two waiting for me on the seat is a risk I am not willing to take.

The girls in Japan need these so they won't be groped.

Our society is increasingly fearful of interacting with other humans. I don't know if it is media or Stranger Danger campaigns or what, but we have become incapable of talking to normal-looking people, let alone someone on the bus who smells a little funny. I also blame things like iPods that become props to prevent interaction. I call them Design for iSolation.

Contrast this with the stories you hear from South America, where people show up at the bus stop and self-assign a number for orderly boarding, or traveling in the Middle East, where food is shared all around the bus or train, along with conversation. We could certainly enjoy our neighbours a lot more.

While there are occasional instances of something going horribly wrong in a public transport (as in the Greyhound bus murder), for the most part riding public transportation is quite uneventful. People rarely strike up conversations with strangers as it is, and are generally respectful when it comes to noise levels and disrupting others.
This just seems unnecessary. It might be good for businessmen seeking some solitude to get work done during their commute, but I doubt that will be primary demographic who end up using the compartments. It will most likely be spoiled, hypochondriacs who can't be bothered by other human beings. I further wager that people who should be in "solitary train confinement" will still opt to use more public seating: mothers with screaming kids (while most mother's do have control over their children, some don't), people with colds who constantly sneeze and cough without covering their mouth, and people who have loud conversations about private matters on their cell phones.

Can you please just make news posts without all the side "me me me" commentary? Any article by Lloyd is always full of "this happened to me! this is my experience!" and "I" statements that I find it detracts from the relatively straight up information that I am seeking.

looks boring. people watching is one of the best reasons to take public transport anyway ;)

Yet people complain about the decline of American communities... why can't they see that their increased desire for privacy contributes to this downward spiral?

The general sentiment among non-treehuggers is that public transit puts you in contact with people who are crazy and smell bad. Might not be the truth, but that's the common perception. At least outside of college towns.

People may do disguting things on public transit, but isn't it better for people to be seen in public places so they don't do worse things? Things like Szarmadzag mentioned? Vandalism, drug deals and things like that are a lot less likely to happen with large crowds watching. I realize things like that still do occur on public transit, but they happen when there aren't large numbers of people. Other people exist; we need to accept that.

Hmmmm. Isolation? Or getting groped by perverts every other time I take public transport during rush hour? Isolation sounds like the better option to me--I'll just bring a book.

I can just imagine the all the drug use, perv-sex, & even rape that will occur in these "private" public spaces, just as in every other bathroom open to the public.
What the Japanese girls need is a .308 to shoot the pecker off the groping pricks, or to live in a society where a guy like that gets the shit beat out of him by surrounding passengers.
I've used public transportation my entire life, and the only problem I've noticed is there isn't enough of a cross-section of the public riding on public transportation. Cars are part of an elitist construct at their very foundation. Mass transportation is essentially egalitarian in nature, which is why so many Amerikans avoid it like the plague.

This is one of those ideas that will never, ever, ever be put into place. It's ridiculously inefficient, and addresses a nonexistent problem.

I kinda like PRT, though. The whole going by the most direct route to your destination thing is awesome. I can actually see it working. This? Useless.

Besides which, bus systems are way more economical than any of the rest of this stuff anyway. If can choose between light rail and three times as much money to spend on your bus system, is it any wonder you'd get better value from the bus system? Electric buses work great in Seattle.

The grisly incident on the Greyhound is what happens when mass transit becomes the option of last resort.

When it's something everyone does, like in Portland, mass transit is generally clean, safe and friendly.

I lived in Japan for six years and used its venerable public transportation system on a daily basis. I met lots of people on the train and bus, despite the Japanese proclivity to mind one's own business.

I don't see something like this gaining widespread adoption. At rush hour you need to cram as many people into all available cars in order to transport everyone home in a timely manner. This design severely reduces the carrying capacity of the train.

This might be a single car on some trains. Users would pay extra for the privilege of having their own space. But compartments in train cars have been around for a while, and not gained wide use.

This would just be too expensive and resource intensive. I'm not a fan of cars at all but in this case, might as well just get everyone a small electric car.

If one is really worried about interacting with the "common folk", first class cars take care of that.

The reason I don't use puplic transport has to do with adding 2 hours onto a 1.5 hour commute, nothing to do with mixing with my fellow humans.
This looks like an excuse to get a government grant.

I must admit that I also would hate to think about what some folks would get up to in one of these, and what the next passenger would be subjected to.

And Andrew, if screaming kids bother you too much, there is probably a bubble you can inhabit somewhere.

I think Bon Jovi (yuk!) used to do the same, but in a fancier way. They all took diff planes after a tour

If the kids are your own, screaming or quiet, you might want to sit with them. They might even want to sit with you if they are under 10. I wouldn't want to have to stow my kids in their own indiv. coffins, then hope to get them out on time at destination before the train pulls out.

The costs of something like this are likely to be too prohibitive to make it functional for cash strapped urban areas investing in public transportation.

I don't think that this alleviates any issues from a safety perspective. Monitoring all compartments would be particularly difficult. If some attempts to commit a crime, eg rape or assault on a person that is isolated in one of these it may go uninterrupted until the train stops again. However, public entities may have deep pockets for potential lawsuits arising from their inaction.

As far as cleanliness goes, what do people commonly do when they are not being watched? Would anyone like to sit somewhere after another person had inhabited that space, and left their junk food, vandalized it, or engaged in any otherwise generally inappropriate behavior.

So, aside from the fact that it looks like you can fit about 4 people into each car, what are the provisions made for families traveling together? Are you just supposed to shove your kid into the small, dark, rumbling box and check on them at each station? This is s ridiculous idea. If you absolutely need to be alone at all times, telecommute.

I can't really find any positive points to this design. What about families? Who wants there kid in a seperate pod? Who wants to pay for a seperate business class train? Not to mention the fact that I dont get claustrophobic very easily, yet just looking at the picture makes me want to go outside and take a big breath of air.

If this is anything like BART in SF, it will just give people more private spaces to poo.

If people have a problem with more isolation, how about doing away with individual homes or private hotel rooms?

Let's all live together 24 hours a day.

Maybe a good idea for airlines for when they finally bribe the government enough to allow cellphones on board... But John M is right - it is society that is the problem, not the transportation system.

A better PRT solution is Cybertran (http://cybertran.com) - if you don't like your fellow passengers then get off (or don't board at all) and wait for the next train which will arrive within minutes.

There you go again, Lloyd, making empty headed comments about PRT.

PRT is not more expensive per passenger to build than rail - and it's much cheaper to operate. And personal travel is not a goal of PRT, it's a side effect of the design which achieves efficiency by using very light vehicles and avoiding stops. You'd know that if you actually read some real literature on PRT, rather than relying on representatives of PRT's competitor (lightrailnow.org) to supply you with material.

If you had done a stitch of real research you would have found that PRT consumes less in energy and costs per passenger than any form of transit - including rail systems. PRT achieves Kyoto year-2050 emissions levels TODAY. It is more than twice as efficient per passenger as a Prius or a typical rail transit line, and all while providing no-wait 24x7 service. Show me a bus or train that can run full service around the clock without becoming grossly expensive and inefficient.

And it scales well too - a PRT guideway carries as much as a street-level light rail line, and you can add as many stations as needed without incurring additional efficiency-killing stops.

But don't let a few facts get in the way of your propaganda, Lloyd.