Affordable and Sustainable Urban Public Transport

The goal of any transport system is to provide us all with increased personal freedom and mobility. The car has played a significant role in helping to achieve this goal. However, in urban areas the car alone is not a sustainable option. Increased car use has resulted in congestion, pollution and an increase in death and injury. In urban areas an efficient and popular public transport system is essential. Rail based systems have a particularly important role to play in larger urban areas. Numerous cities have identified rail based public transport systems as providing the ideal solution to their transport problems. However, in many cases, the enormous capital costs of such systems have proved an insurmountable barrier. In this paper we suggest how these capital costs could be significantly reduced by moving the power source onto the vehicle. The resulting reduction in infrastructure costs could allow many more cities to construct the rail based public transport systems they desire, and the market for light rail vehicles will grow.