Living in the countryside has its advantages, but let's face it: getting around can be a real hassle. Either you take the car and travel kilometers upon kilometres, or you wait hours for that blessed bus or train to pass, assuming it's there. No wonder most people prefer cars, even if it means traffic jams, stress and pollution. But what if there was a solution that changed the cards on the table? The one we explore here is called Monocab, and it's a pretty cool on-demand monorail electric cabin design. Let's take a look at how it works together.
Those geniuses at OWL University and co
Behind Monocab there is a German dream team of brains: the OWL University of Technology, Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences and the Fraunhofer IOSB-INA (an old acquaintance of Futuro Prossimo). Thanks to money from the European Union, from 2022 they are working to transform abandoned railways into runways for super-tech electric pods.
The idea is this: you book your pod with an app, it picks you up at the nearest station and takes you into the city all by itself, without needing to drive. A kind of autonomous monorail taxi.
Self-balancing pods on a monorail? A certain Louis has already thought of it...
Ok, if they thawed you today you will be thinking: "But how do these pods manage to stay balanced on a single track without falling?". The trick is a gyroscopic system that makes them self-balance, leaving the other track free for pods traveling in the opposite direction. A single, old rail becomes a road with two directions.
And if it still seems strange to you, think that someone Louis Brennan he had already thought about it at the beginning of the 900s, building a self-balancing monorail that really worked.
As always, the future is already here: it's just not well distributed.
And even now, in fact, there are still some details to be worked out. Like preventing the pods from piling up on one side, not exactly a negligible detail. Our heroes are working on it: the idea is to create a kind of "elevator" that moves empty pods from one track to another. It will take a little patience: the final prototype will be ready by 2028.
Meanwhile, in a remote German countryside (it's not true, it's not remote. I'm just tired of recovering the name of the place) the first experimental pods are already covering kilometers on a small piece of railway. There's the video, below. And I'll tell you more: the on-demand monorail cabin project is so popular that it could revolutionize public transport in rural areas across Europe. No more queues, no more endless waiting, but an on-demand pod service that takes us where we want, when we want.
The future travels by monorail
Monocab it has all it takes to play its small part in the future of sustainable mobility. Why use the car when you can have a personal, comfortable, fast and ecological pod?
Let's keep an eye on these jokers from OWL University and their partners, because if their project works, in a few years we could find ourselves whizzing along on a monorail in the middle of the greenery, while motorists remain stuck in traffic. If this isn't a revolution: getting into a cabin all to ourselves, enjoying the view and arriving at our destination without stress, knowing that we have made the right choice for us and for the planet.
Scusate it è poco.