Google Invests In Human Monorail Shweeb … Sheesh
If you were gonna ask me what Google’s next investment would be, in a million years I wouldn’t have answered a human-powered monorail transportation system. But via Google’s Project 10^100, the search engine giant announced on Friday that it’s given $1 million to Shweeb, which makes a transportation system based on pedal-powered pods that zoom around a monorail track about 20 feet above the ground.
If that sounds like a crazy but kinda cool concept, that’s because it is. The original prototype was built as a ride in an amusement park in New Zealand, where pod pedalers race each other on a side-by-side track for a fee of $35. Google is funding the company to help it test the system as public transportation in an urban setting. Shweeb hasn’t announced the location of the planned first transit system (please make it in the Bay Area), but says on its website it will disclose the location shortly.
Here’s some characteristics of the Shweeb that likely attracted Google: It requires practically no energy other than human pedaling so it’s a fossil-fuel-free transportation, and it’s really efficient, requiring “less energy to cover a given distance than any other vehicle on earth,” according to the company. The pedaled pods are also based on recumbent bikes (the bikes where you sit back and relax), which I could imagine Google’s young outdoor enthusiast types identified with.
Some of the obvious drawbacks of the system are that it would likely be a NIMBY and regulation nightmare getting it built 20 feet off the ground in certain urban areas. On the company’s website, it paints a picture of Shweeb pods outside every second story window, where commuters hop out to a platform and pedal to work. I can picture that happening in a scene from “Inception,” but not in reality.
These types of “out-there” transportation — including the Segway — naturally have a massive barrier to getting people to embrace the technology. Commuting to work is painful enough without turning to an unproven technology.
Probably the best thing that Google could do for Shweeb would be to offer Google’s sprawling headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. as a location for one of their transportation systems. Google employees would love it and likely give valuable feedback.
About a year ago, Google launched its Project 10 ^ 100, which called on inventors and creative types to submit ideas that would help the world. Google received 150,000 submissions, and on Friday — a year later — announced it would hand out $10 million to five ideas. The Shweeb won the award via the “drive innovation in public transportation” section.
Related research from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):
I kinda like the idea.
“Don’t be a dweeb, take the Shweeb!”
Next up, suspended pneumatic tubes for those quick cross-town trips, sans pedals.
Poof!
This may be one of the silliest, most impractical ideas I’ve ever heard get funding. It can only have two stops, one at each end. It only goes as fast the slowest rider. And there’s no way to return the cars without riders. And where do you put your stuff? How about this: build a bike path. All the advantages, probably 1/100th the cost and you get all the same political challenges!
Put ‘em in touch with Gary Fisher. He’ll show them how to do it in tunnels.
ok
Short google.. Now.
I’ll bet it gets hot in that enclosed plexiglass case… And god help you if there are any physical exertion related gas expel events. Lol. Short google now – that’s all I got
So. It’s like a bicycle, but far less practical. Tell me how I’m wrong?
-expensive
-can’t pass others on single tracks
-small rollers in tracks: higher rolling resistance than a large bike wheel
Google- if you’re gonna waste money, go the Carmack route!
Just to be fair:
– if it gets too hot inside depends on the design of the pod, it has to be built with holes in the front and the back. I don’t think thats a problem…
- If its more expensive than a bike-path depends on many factors. The should be the case where land-prices are high enough to allow for benefits of the low footprint.
- You don’t have to have just one start and one stop: Someone invented something called “switch” long time ago… Maybe the time when the first railways were built. Most of the time this helps out with such “problems”
- small rollers have higher resistance for sure, but I’m not sure if the combination rubber/street is better than steel/steel. I’m quite sure not…
-Not beeing able to pass someone is not as bad as it looks like on first sight: You can push him! Could be fun (At least more than pushing the car in front of you stuck in a bad traffic jam) and furthermore: switches can help solving this too…
-definitely a bike path offers disadvantages, maybe it rains in your area sometimes – if not you’re a luke guy ;-)
When done PROPERLY, it could have a chance. Solar driven assistance could be an option regarding the fact that you need something like 50 Watts to drive at 40 kph.
The infrastucture seems to be made of standardized steel with very low material (less than a bike path maybe…) Should be at least cheap to maintain.
However. I hope they choose the right location for the first implementation – Maybe a place where people are not stuck with old ideas and open for new technology (which always has benefits AND drawbacks). Seems like they are going to choose a place with high human density – a good idea btw – people stuck in traffic should quickly realize that its better to be slow at constant speed than to be potentially fast but always stuck in jam.
Well, I’m done, throw the stones ;-)
My friends and I built that in the 7th grade, we never thought that working adults would use our invention, we laid like .5 miles of track through the woods at about a 12 ft elevation. Worked great, greased 3″ pipe donated from a local supplier was donated and given back at the end of the project.
While I appreciate Google’s desire to promote new transit concepts, this one is a real dud. The thing you need in a high density environment is capacity, which is why articulated buses and light rail win out for surface transportation. You could accomplish the same end by building a network of elevated bike paths so bikers, and pedestrians, are completely separated from vehicle traffic. Add plants etc to the sides, and it could be visually appealing to minimize the NIMBY effect.
Then if you want to go all Woody Allen, you could add a couple bumper car tracks in the center. (One of the best stunts I’ve seen in SF was a guy who rigged a bumper car to run off the overhead Muni power lines).
Ya, except your idea:
1. Costs 10x more to build
2. The maintenance for your idea is much more costly
I bet this is something that will pop up at the google plex sooner or later … i’m not seeing this practically applied in a suburban or downtime scenario in a big city.
Looks like fun, but seems a bit impractical. Those tubes are bound to get sweaty and stinky pretty quickly! Might make more sense to build a 4 or 6 lane covered bicycle pathway, which would allow for passing and more fresh air.
While it’s a fun idea, anyone who invests money in something like this because they think it might become a viable method of public transportation is just insane. There are so many things wrong with the idea it’s not even worth discussing.
I think that it’s a great concept, but it will be an epic fail in the end. Let’s take a look at this, it’s used as a ride in New Zealand…for racing other people. So you put a ton of these pods on a rail where everyone has a different comfort zone for how fast they want to go. You catch up to someone else on the rail that’s slower than you and then WHAM, you get Pod-Rage!
I remember also thinking how impractical this sounded. Upon reading their web site, however, I think that Google may have been most impressed by some of the enabling technology supporting things like switching based on a pre-programmed destination, and getting in and out of stations without disrupting traffic that is not stopping. The only thing that’s really impractical, I think, is the pedal-power aspect, but that’s really just a gimmick. Replace that with an electrically powered system and you’ve got an innovative alternative to light-rail that addresses some of it’s shortcomings, like the fact that you have to live and work near a station.
Schweeb’s stations sound like they can be smaller, that there can be more of them, and that the system can therefore get you closer to your destination (on average) than a light-rail system could, and this is largely a result of not having to funnel all vehicles into every station, and the ability to automatically switch vehicles individually between lines. Also a lot of the efficiency aspects, like combining pods into trains and conserving momentum on the way in and out of stations, are just as applicable to an electrically powered system as to a human powered one.
Surveying the comments above, I am struck by how lucky the world is that the Wright Brothers lived in a pre-blog age.
And then they invested in some dumb stuff…
This idea is NOT crazy. They have answered every single negative comment – read the FULL description under http://shweeb.com/index.php?m=transport.
You want crazy – look at the ‘Elevator into Space’ idea – they asked Arthur C Clarke when it would be built and he said ’50 years after people stop laughing’. Well some people have stopped laughing and are investing. And Google has stopped laughing about Scweeb, and Google doesn’t take 50 years to do anything. If you want to bet against Google I’ll take your money!
15mph TRUE AVERAGE SPEED in London would beat every mode of transport except helicopter. Average car speeds are 7 to 10 mph, buses and tubes only go on FIXED routes, at FIXED times, so adding waiting time, changes and escalators drags the TRUE AVERAGE way down. Who would go at 5mph if you can do a guaranteed 15mph straight to your destination with NO STOPS, NO CHANGES and NO DELAYS?
I just hope that this idea can scale up to handle higher speeds and longer journeys (which means incorporating powered drives and better safety controls).
It’s time to stop laughing.
That’s the stupidest damn thing I’ve seen in a long time! You can’t pass slower riders and you’re limited to where there are ‘tracks’. I’ll keep my bicycle, thank you!
Not passing slower riders is the whole idea!!! You push them! What google knows and doesn’t say is that when you get a whole peloton together these things are going to absolutely FLY.