City traffic on rails
— and Luleå wants to be part of a pilot project

LULEÅ. Zipping along five meters above Main Street in your own vehicle. This is not science fiction anymore. A pilot project for trackcars [PRT] is of interest to Luleå.

+ Future traffic going on rails. Magnus Hunhammar believes a test will gets Luleå to bite on PRT. Foto: Bengt-åke Persson

A pilot project for PRT should be of interest to Luleå , believes development head Jörgen Eriksson. Photo Bengt-åke Persson

The future is already here. In the hunt for a more sustainable traffic before future can Luleå become a test site for the whole world. The proposal is coming from the Institute for Sustainable Transportation IST, which sees Luleå as a good place to develop PRT. It wants to see vehicles traveling in a rail network about five meters above ground, propelled by electromagnetic impulses.

"This is no longer science fiction, although it may seem so," says Magnus Hunhammar from IST.

Many interested

Tuesday he held a seminar with invitations to the city of Luleå, the Swedish Rail Agency, Luleå University of Technology, and Aurorum Science Park, where a vision for future traffic is looking up. And PRT systems are not Utopian. In September a test track opened in Uppsala, a project by the Korean steel giant Posco at an investment of several hundred million kronor. Many Swedish cities have also made known their interest in the test work.

Lofty reputation

"Sweden is interesting for its lofty reputation where standardization is concerned. It sounds better than Made in Korea. As a result it is interesting climate for test work," Hunhammar said.

"The superb value for Luleå is that a test track should draw people here from the whole world. Being cold here is an advantage, and since also Swedish Steel and the Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag mining company are located here," says associate Christine Lindström, and pointing to the superb knowledge found at LUT in both information technology and ultrastrong steel.

Cheap alternative

PRT's initial phase has been long in development. Planned is an environmentally friendly and cheap alternative to the automobile, but complete flexibility lies in the future with development of a system where one is able to connect one's own car to an available PRT.

"We don't really know how it is going to behave in large-scale. If it works it will have long-term consequences for all in community. The am not going exclusively that think economic policy, one must also weigh the environment and all community economic aspects," said Lindström.

The environment

Jörgen Eriksson of Luleå municipality's development office listened to the account with interest.

"I think there is an interest for this. We have well developed testing work in the county, why not have such activity here connected to Luleå. This is not Utopian. It just needs to find financing," he said.

"There is also a big symbolic value, with environmental aspects and a track up above ground where one travels in the air."

By Kristofer Naess