DISTRIBUTED PARKING

Another reason that CityTram is much faster than mass transit is there is usually no waiting for a vehicle.  The stations act like taxi stands.  Each has a small number of empty cars parked and waiting for a rider.  In fact CityTram is much like personal cars in this aspect.  Rather than walking to the parking lot to get in your empty car and depart, you walk to the station to get in an empty car and depart.   This makes CityTram use just as immediate as use of a personal car, except for those places where a parking lot is very close – like in your personal garage.  At the destination, CityTram is often more immediate than personal cars, since there is never a need to search for a parking space.

Since the cars are autonomously controlled they are free to be moved from one station to another while empty.  This allows the system to pre-position empty cars where they are needed, in anticipation of demand.  The sophistication of this pre-positioning can vary.  A stand-alone CityTram system may simply attempt to keep the distribution of empty cars geographically even.  After some learning it may attempt to create imbalances to match/offset learned daily and weekly commute patterns.  A CityTram system used to extend an existing train system can use train ticket purchase data to predict station arrival, and use this data for pre-positioning.