One hundred years ago, the electric streetcar revolutionized urban public transportation. In the thirty years from 1888 to 1917, 45,000 miles of streetcar tracks were built in the United States. But in the years since then, the automobile has displaced the streetcar and its successor, the transit bus. This happened because neither the streetcar nor the bus could provide the higher level of travel freedom offered by the automobile, but Taxi2000 does offer another solution to this transportation dilemma--Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) systems which uses total electricity to run, cause no air pollution, no traffic congestion, and much more.
The population of the United States has doubled since the 1930's and many communities that were rural towns in the depression years have grown into large cities where the private automobiles as has become the primary mode of transit. And as these cities have grown in population, traffic congestion has forced them to expand far way from a central core . and these spreading cities can no longer be served in a significant way by line haul transit systems, such as buses and light rail. .
The lack of effective public transit is having a telling effect on most of our cities. The needs of the automobile - streets, parking lots, and multi-story garages - consume 50% to 80% of the land in city centers. In some cities, such land requirements have virtually destroyed the economic viability of downtown districts. The sheer volume of automobiles and buses chokes the streets and brings traffic to a crawl. Traffic congestion and the accompanying air pollution have now become critical problems in cities across our nation and around the world.
A new approach to urban transportation is required--one that is sufficiently low in cost and high in service quality that it will be accepted as an attractive and viable alternative to the automobile. This new mode of transportation must have adequate speed, capacity, safety, and reliability.
