Since our beloved and normally only sporadically dangerous T has decided to be more reliably and consistently terrifying, and since everybody deciding to drive to work en masse would end life in Greater Boston as we know it, what are your alternatives? Even better, what are your science-fiction-y alternatives that won’t really be available any time soon? MHT Blog is here to help.
Terrafugia's Transition
Let’s start with the outrageously impractical: If you’ve got about $150,000 burning a hole in your pocket — and these days, who doesn’t? — you could buy a flying car. But that would really just amount to driving, since Terrafugia insists its Transition is a “roadable aircraft” — you drive to the airport and fly to LaGuardia, you don’t just take off while stuck in traffic on 128.
Rail-Pod
You absolutely cannot use automated, personal train cars to get to work — but it would be cool if you could. Rail-Pod, started by four UMass Amherst alumni, wants to build feeder lines to the existing fire-and-crash-prone train lines on unused tracks — but even if they accomplish their goals, that’s a ways off.
Pretty soon, you should be able to bike to work even if you don’t own a bicycle. Last month, the city of Boston chose Bixi, the operator of Montreal’s bike sharing program, to install 290 kiosks around the city where users could swipe a card to rent one of 2,500 commuter bikes by the hour. That was bad news for BU spinout BikeNow, now setting its sights on Baltimore.
If that sounds like too much work, the MIT Media Lab’s Smart Cities project is working on a similar project that replaces the bikes with electric RoboScooters. It won’t be deployed here, though, due to our winter weather — the project is aimed at cities in Europe and Asia.
The Uno
And if those bike sharing projects sound too socialist or involve too many wheels for you, MIT undergrad Ben Gulak has invented a one-wheeled motorcycle — the Uno — which would be a zany, if still subject to traffic laws and road rage, way to get to work. Gulak has founded a company in Cambridge, BPG Inc., to market the motor/unicycle.
Lastly, for the crowdsourcing self-determinist, there’s Local Motors, in Wareham. The company designs cars using submissions from an open-source community. On the downside, this would be extremely long-term commute planning, and you might end up with this.
Long story short: Good luck on the T.
Posted by Brendan Lynch
Tags: Ben Gulak, BikeNow, Bixi, BPG Inc., Local Motors, MBTA, MIT Media Lab, Rail-Pod, RoboScooter, Smart Cities, Terrafugia, The Homer, The Uno, Transition
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It would be nice to see us expand and then perfect the T system that we have. Just returned from living in Singpore where a super-shiny clean smooth, quiet subway system speeds commuters all over the city with cars space every two minutes (really!) during rush hour. Am also a pass holder to the Tokyo subway system that is immensely bigger and also a marvel to behold. When the subways and trains run this well, driving a car no longer seems like a priviledge as we mostly view it here. Per the criteria for our submissions; Some believe that approximating a similar showpiece rail transit system in Boston is among the most ‘outrageously impractical’ of ideas – would be nice to try.