The "system" actually comprises the investments and activities of many independent entities: the private sector, a large number of governments at all levels, and the users.

FlexiTrain extends the existing private transport paradigm. By not attempting to upset the stakeholders in the present order, it may stand a chance of acceptance. A strong feature of the system is that it can be as “private” or “public” as the particular installation demands.

It can be argued that the Internet pattern is the best model for how transportation systems are created and evolve.

FlexiTrain goes further: implementation is cheap enough to be driven top-down, or from private sector initiatives. In reality, this will be a dynamic balance struck between the desire of local authorities to improve the urban environment, and individuals to improve their personal transport.

The high speed goal also poses serious limitations on route alignments.

FlexiTrain uses existing design highway speeds and thus fits into existing town planning. It has been shown that high maximum speeds in urban environments are largely negated by the other elements of the trip total.

There's also a chicken-and-egg problem… people would have to be persuaded to buy the special vehicles that would have very limited use in most cases, and might be obsolete by the time they had guideways on which to operate

Unlike systems using major guideway infrastructure from the outset, there is not really a critical "minimum size" for the FlexiTrain system to be demonstrated. Two vehicles can do the job, although three is a practical minimum.

The high capacity … will typically not be matched in urban areas by the ability of local roads to handle the traffic generated-the bottlenecks will simply to moved around, not eliminated.

FlexiTrain has a unique capability among dual-mode systems: its destination can be radically modified while en route. This works extremely well with ITS under present development. The system will choose the “best fit” least-congested destination, based on real time, dynamic traffic modelling. Individual vehicles will be updated with destination data and likely conditions at the drop-off point, together with further routing information as required.

Think about real origins, destinations, stops made, chained trips…to get a feeling for how people actually use the transportation system.  

I found this to be the most important statement of all, given who is talking.

“Systems People” might pause and try to overcome their infatuation with a particular technology, to ask themselves why it is necessary to do what they are attempting. Thanks again to Dr. Hopkins (and Francis Reynolds, for that matter) for opening up an interesting avenue of discussion.