Transit X – inspired by Taxi 2000?
When Chipshol presented its concept for an Airport City adjacent to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, in the early 1990s, it was no shortsighted plan. Visionary Jan Poot recognised the need for alternative transport solutions to end congestion and to ensure environment-friendly mobility for the long term. He had a design drawn up for a revolutionary Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system, a people mover, using cutting-edge technology at the time. This was when self-driving cars were still considered science-fiction! Chipshol’s Taxi 2000 system was never built at Schiphol, although London Heathrow and Abu Dhabi Airport later launched similar systems inspired by the same concept.
With today’s levels of technology –as self-driving cars are becoming reality, but with major challenges when it comes to safety– the concept of Taxi 2000 may become reality after all. Transit X, “a privately-funded shared mobility network with the convenience, capacity, and cost to replace buses, trains, cars, trucks, and short flights”, is a start-up working hard on a green, fat, safe, economical and ultra quiet mass transit system. Very much like the original Taxi 2000 concept, Transit X features pods, each carrying a single passenger or families up to five. The pods cruise quietly above traffic under a narrow track. Destinations are entered via smart phone or kiosk prior to boarding. Passengers board pods at stops that are as convenient as taxi or bus stops. A pod takes off and cruises nonstop until landing at the destination. Exactly the way Jan Poot conceptualised it nearly 30 years ago. Check it out at transitx.com.