Test-Riding Personal Rapid Transit in Masdar City (Video)
by Brian Merchant
from http://www.treehugger.com/
![masdar-prt-cars.jpg](http://www.treehugger.com/masdar-prt-cars.jpg)
Photos: Brian Merchant
Masdar City was designed to be a cleantech geek's dream come true -- it will be almost entirely powered by renewable energy, cooled by towers that draw wind into breeze corridors, and navigated by a number of futuristic mass transportation options. The Personal Rapid Transit system -- all-electric, driverless pod cars that would ferry denizens around Masdar along magnetically guided lines -- was the transportation proposal that perhaps attracted the most excitement. And for good reason: the PRT is sleek, low-carbon, and pretty damn fun to ride. I had the good fortune of testing it out during an extensive tour of Masdar City yesterday -- it went something like this:
Nick Aster of Triple Pundit was on the tour as well, and he put together this great video of the PRT ride (sadly, Air's electro-lounge background music wasn't included in the real-life experience -- but if you had to pick a single song that should be, this one's got my vote ...).
![masdar-prt.jpg](http://www.treehugger.com/masdar-prt.jpg)
Now, the PRT has been the subject of much speculation, and it looks as if plans to adopt the system to the scale originally envisioned (3,000 units making 150,000 trips a day) have largely been abandoned. They're made by the Dutch company 2GetThere, and are essentially little electric cars, each powered by lithium-phosphate batteries. As it stands, there are just a handful of the vehicles ferrying the slightly larger handful of people who currently live in Masdar between the two stations -- while we waited, some residents did hop on the PRT.
Granted, there's only one cluster of buildings built thus far in Masdar, so it was a short ride. But it amply demonstrated the comfort, smoothness, and general I-feel-like-I'm-in-the-future-ness one would expect from riding the PRT.
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