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Self-balancing commuter pods ride old railway lines on demand


Country folk tend to like the independence offered by their cars, so how do you get them to use public transit? The Monocab system may be the answer, as it utilizes individual on-demand pods that travel on existing abandoned railways.

However, what if it were possible to hail a small electric vehicle right when you needed it – via a taxi- or Uber-style app – which would pick you up on a nearby railway then autonomously drive you into town? Project founder Thorsten Försterling tells us that the team is working on a track-installed machine that will be able to lift individual pods off of one rail and place them on the other ( without passengers in them at the time), keeping them from all collecting at either end of the route. Some of this technology may sound a bit "over-ambitious," but keep in mind the project was inspired by a fully functional self-balancing monorail that mechanical engineer Louis Brennan designed and demonstrated back in the early 1900s.

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