Suburban 'Last Mile' Solution

2 July 2004 - 11:00am

A proposed personal monorail and advanced cellphone technology would reduce Palo Alto office park SOV commute trips and reclaim parking spaces for in-fill housing.

"Steve Raney is working hard to pitch what he admits is a somewhat outlandish notion of how to cut commute traffic in Palo Alto: a $50 million monorail system that would ferry workers between the 160 companies in the Stanford Research Park and the Caltrain station on California Avenue."

Raney began developing the sytem while working on his graduate degree at the University of California-Berkeley. The system "would send riders scooting over the elevated track in 300 small, three-passenger monorail cars at 30 mph. The driverless electric cars would avoid delays by passing by intermediate stations, not stopping until they reached their destination."

Source: San Jose Mercury News, July 1, 2004
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Whether building new streets or retrofitting existing ones, designers need to be aware of the road’s immediate surroundings.