Currently we find ourselves in the late phase of international development of road networks. Alas have we now arrived at a point when cities all jammed with car traffic. Something must be done.

So what’s coming next in transportation?

"PRT," said experts when they gathered for a seminar on future transport systems at the Cultural Centre in Stockholm. PRT stands for Personal Rapid Transit, which in Sweden is usually called trackcars or tracktaxis.

They consist of small, fully automated driverless rail vehicles for 4-6 people on their own track, ideally overhead on pillar-mounted beams, so it does not occupy space on existing roads.

Such beam networks should be comparatively cheap to build and can be adapted to existing streets and buildings. Trackcars operate by a person programming in a destination, and cars don’t stop, automatically going there the fastest way.

Trackcars have been discussed and researched at regular intervals since the 1960s, but never fully got off the drawing board. It is expensive and uncertain to be first with a product a new and untried technology. With technology moreover there is risk that a product can be obsolete as soon as it is implemented. One trackcar system is claiming to be an investor in a new infrastructure, one with a wholly new “fine-meshed” track network. What if one is choosing the wrong system? Has one then thrown money in the lake?

A developmental tracktaxi network should however have many advantages compared with subway, trolley ors bus, believes one advocate. Tracktaxis should be environmentally-friendly, safe and energy-stingy. Station waiting times should be brief. A tracktaxi network should also have more closely spaced stations than trolleys and subways, and accordingly can receive a greater catchment area of use.

Now work on the first groundbreaking for real world trackcar system is coming to Uppsala in spring. Here Vectus, a subsidiary of Korean steel giant Posco, with Earthworks help, build a pilot track for its electric trackcar system on a hill. Company’s goal is to develop a system for the international market.

Posco and Vectus want to be the first out with an international certified standard for a trackcar network. The reason they are building their small pilot track in Uppsala is partly to observe how it performs in winter, partly to find out for oneself inside the EU, that is a collaboration of Sweden’s Noventus on the control systems, and that receives help of Swedish Railway Commission with the European certification.

The test track will not be especially large, only a 400 meter long track on five meter high posts. It will overall resemble a starter model train set: three vehicles, eight curves, six straightaways and two switchpoints. Though at 1/1 scale.

Curve radius will be 35 meters and vehicles, propelled by electric linear motors, may have a top speed of 45 km/hr. $7.9 million is the calculated cost to build the track. Also expected is $5.2 million for operation during five years. The track will be in operation in October, says Han-Young Choi, Vectus project supervisor.

But there are many competing versions of trackcar technology. They can be hung beneath the guideway, as with the suspended trains in Wuppertal and Dortmund. This protects the "rails" from snow and ice, which is required in our climate.

A Danish system called RUF is building "Dual Mode," they say vehicles will drive both on guideways and normal roadways. A 20 meter test track is located outside Copenhagen.

It's also a flexible system of vehicles of various sizes and types -- trolleys, tracktaxis and cargo vehicles can all use dual mode guideway. Another idea is couple many small vehicles together into trains on longer journeys. This reduces wind resistance and lowers energy consumption.

The matter is agreed on. It is high time that a commercial tracktaxi system is built, somewhere in the world.

Kaianders Sempler