On Jan 29, 7:43 am, Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
23:56:13 on Mon, 28 Jan 2008, Tom Anderson
remarked:

Be interesting to see how ULTRA goes at Terminal 5,

Indeed. I have a hard time seeing how it could be better in
cost/benefit terms than a more traditional bit of light rail; the cost
per passenger of the pods must be greater, surely? As you say, we'll see.

Although they have pretty much a green fields site for the pod route at
T5, if/when it is extended to T123 (via the old taxi tunnels) it would
not be easy to construct light rail instead.

I understand the pods can be fairly easilly mounted on pillars --
lighter than the DLR, although presumably less capacity than a DLR at
full rate (say 1.3 people per car, one car per 5 seconds, 1000 people
per hour).

That's equivelent to a DLR at ~60 people per carriage, 2 carriage per
train, 8tph, more frequent than many branches.

The size of a station to disgorge one car per 15 seconds (assume 3
stations either side of a central coridor) would be fairly high, but
it works on ski lifts.