This article was taken from the April 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
With more than 500,000 commuter cars coming in every day, Tel Aviv is one of the world's most traffic-choked cities -- and extreme problems require extreme solutions. skyTran, based in the Nasa research park in Moffett Field, California, is developing a Jetsons alternative: a transportation system, whose two-person capsules suspended from an aluminium monorail rush passengers to their destination at up to 250kph. The secret to its speed: magnetic levitation.
The system is based on aerospace engineer Douglas Malewicki's 1990 patent for the mag-lev monorail concept: "The key thing Douglas realised was you mustn't fall into the trap of thinking that mass transit is about how many people you can fit in the vehicle, but rather how many people you can move from point A to point B in a given amount of time," says skyTran CEO Jerry Sanders.
skyTran hopes to be running by 2017, with a nine-kilometre track from the port to the leisure district, through the University station to the new tech hub, all for around $50 million (£30.5 million). The company is also in talks with other regional authorities, including Kerala in India. Here's how it will work.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
