Urban transport

Urban transport SkyWay is a unique infrastructure solution for towns, mega-cities and their suburbs.

Modern cities develop not according to the customary extensive way (the growth of the metropolis, the increasing population density), but by uniting with several nearby towns of different sizes by means of modern logistics and transport communications. Thus, a city is developing not due to the absorption of new areas, but as a result of increasing transport accessibility and eliminating distance as a problem.

Urban SkyWay transport is a result of many years of experience and unique technical solutions that provide all the basic criteria of quality transport services, such as:

• safety;
• accessibility and affordability;
• comfort;
• environmental friendliness;
• minimum power and resource consumption.

Urban SkyWay transport includes:

• rolling stock;
• track infrastructure;
• safety and complex control system.

The rolling stock of urban transport − unibus – is an automated self-propelled module on steel wheels of suspended or mounted type, designed to operate exclusively on Sky Way track infrastructure and provides for the transportation of people and cargo.

Urban unbuses can be supplied in various modifications taking into account specific features of the region of operation and customer requirements.

The capacity of a unibus is 14 people. They can be assembled in a train of up to 100 passengers capacity. Maximum travel speed in the city is up to 150 km/h. The motion drive of the unibus is electromechanical, with power supply from the contact catenary and/or on-board source of electricity.

Track infrastructure is designed to service the users of the urban SkyWay complex. It consists of a pre-stressed continuous bearing rail-string structure mounted on supports above the ground at the projected height according to customer requirements, and stations (logistics terminals).

The safety and complex control system is designed for automatic control of rolling stock, automated control of the power supply system, collection, storage, analysis of data on component parts of the complex and development of optimal (rational) decisions and control actions to ensure safe operation mode of component parts and the complex as a whole.

Key features of urban SkyWay transport:

1. Motion speed in a city — up to 150 km/h.
2. Capacity of rolling stock:

• passengers — up to 100 people;
• cargo — up to 10 tons.

1. Track gradient — up to 15%, with a special design — up to 30%.
2. Transportation distance — up to 200 km.
3. The volume of high-speed city transportations:

• passengers in rush hour — up to 25 thousand people in one direction;
• cargo — up to 1 thousand tons per day in one direction.

1. Net cost of high-speed city traffic — 2 times lower than the net cost of underground transportation, 3 times less than by tram, 5 times less than by a monorail way.

Competitive advantages:

1.  Decrease of capital expenditure for construction due to:

• significant decrease in acquisition of land required for the track and infrastructure;
• exception of solid roadbed, transport tunnels, bridges, viaducts, multi-level interchanges, overhead and underground pedestrian crossings;
• keeping the cost of rail-string overpass unchanged irrespectively of the type of terrain, strength of underlying soils and complexity of geographical and climatic conditions;
• decrease by the order of resource intensity for a string-rail overpass compared to conventional transport flyovers with solid roadbed.

2. Reduction of operating costs:

• by reducing the consumption of energy and fuel;
• by reducing expenses for operating personnel and their wages;
• by reducing the volume of track maintenance and repair work;
• by avoiding the necessity to clean the track structure of ice and snow.

3. Reduction of the net cost of high-speed urban transportation of passengers and cargo by two and more times.

4. Possibility of sparing development and land settlement on new territories in hard-to-reach places, comfortable to live in, — islands, mountains, sea shelf, etc.

5. Possibility of combining the track structure and its supports with cable power lines and communication lines — wire, radio relay, cellular.

6. Improving the reliability and safety of all-weather and year-round operation of high-speed urban transport system in any climatic conditions.

Environmental friendliness

1. Low resource and power consumption at all stages of the life cycle of the high-speed off-street urban transport system (project designing, construction, operation and dismantling).
2. High-speed track of overpass design does not violate terrain, biogeocenose and biodiversity of the adjacent natural city territory.
3. The urban route does not destroy fertile soil and vegetation growing on it.
4. The track does not prevent:

• movement of ground and surface waters;
• movement of people, domestic and wild animals;
• operation of constructional and special machinery. 

Reliability and safety

1. Availability of anti-derailment device on the high-speed rolling stock.
2. Ten-fold margin of safety of bearing string elements in the transport overpass.
3. Stability to ice, glaciation, snowdrifts and dust storms.
4. Reliable operation at extreme air temperatures.
5. High stability to vandalism and terrorist acts.
6. Stability to natural disasters (with special design and minimum price rise):

• earthquakes of magnitude up to 10 points on the Richter scale;
• floods  and river overflows with water depth up to 20 meters;
• hurricane wind with speed up to 250 km/h;
• tsunami with wave height up to 50 meters.