Space Coast could help develop futuristic, monorail-like mass transit— again

It's like a page from science-fiction: A techno transit company, using Jetsons-like pods and magnetic levitation, will build a test track at Kennedy Space Center and develop a mass transit system capable of whisking commuters around an elevated rail network.

Futuristic as it sounds, the concept isn't new to Brevard County, which played a role in trying to make it a reality nearly two decades ago.

In 1999, startup Maglev 2000 began building a test track at Space Coast Regional Airport in Titusville to demonstrate a magnetically levitating train, which would use magnetic forces to lift and propel over air a vehicle resembling a Disney World monorail.

Led by scientists who had patented the technology in the '60s, Maglev 2000 planned a 20-mile line linking the airport to KSC and Port Canaveral, a route that, if successful, could be extended west to Orlando International Airport and Disney.

“This reach to the future has succeeded before right here, where our space program was born,” a project summary stated.

Today, a retention pond occupies the area where Rockledge-based W&J Construction poured a 20-foot-wide concrete strip with rebar jutting from one end, where a ramp was supposed to slope upward to continue the half-mile track that a prototype train would swoosh across.

The airport tore down the aborted track to make way for another project years after Maglev 2000 abandoned its offices and machine shop on the corner of Golden Knights Boulevard and Tico Road.

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Initially one of seven projects in a competition led by the Federal Railroad Administration, the company failed to advance to the next round, losing out to projects in Pennsylvania and Maryland.

When the money dried up, Maglev 2000 and its Space Age transit line through Brevard were gone.

“They had all these big dreams and hopes,” recalled Richard Jones, facilities director for the Titusville-Cocoa Airport Authority. “None of that ever took place.”

Enter skyTran, which aims to use another form of magnetic levitation to whisk “jet-like” two-person pads across an elevated, computer-controlled network.

The so-called Personal Rapid Transit concept is a bit like Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, but with pods whizzing through overhead guideways instead of underground tunnels, and designed for travel within cities rather than between them.

The vision is still to provide a more affordable and eco-friendly way to move people between destinations fast, relieving crowded roads.

SkyTran founders believe it’s time transportation caught up with digital advances in communications and information technology.

“We use Twitter while waiting for the bus, track packages or monitor the electrical grid online, but the physical realities of surface transportation and power electronics have not changed all that much in  100 years,” founder and “chief visionary” Douglas Malewicki wrote in a 2009 paper. “This is about to change.”

A tenant at NASA's Ames Research Park in Silicon Valley, skyTran is negotiating with Space Florida to lease 15 acres near KSC’s former shuttle runway for 30 to 50 years, a deal not yet completed.

The company wants to build a test track and is dangling the possibility of bringing its headquarters there, which Space Florida hinted could include more than 200 jobs.

The only catch: skyTran has yet to field an operational system anywhere.

SkyTran's website touts a 2015 investment from Innovation Endeavors, a venture capital firm whose backers include Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google parent Alphabet.

That was a $2.5 million investment, according to CrunchBase, which shows skyTran also secured a $30 million bridge loan last year from Hong Kong-based Verita Merchant Bank.

SkyTran in 2014 said it would build a test track on the campus of Israeli Aerospace Industries. Bill Ferguson, vice president for business development for SkyTran, said in an email that "ongoing 'Maglev' flight testing is underway at the IAI campus.  It is being used to demonstrate full scale technology operation."

He declined to release any other details at this time.

Closer to home, skyTran has at least one passionate supporter.

Tom Nocera hopes to become the first U.S. owner and operator of a skyTran system, which would cross a nearly three-mile span between Clearwater with Clearwater Beach.

“We see it as the next big thing in transportation,” said Nocera. “As far as alleviating traffic, you have to go into that upper dimension because otherwise, no matter if your car is self-driving or how fancy it is, you’re still in traffic.”

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Nocera helped introduce skyTran to Space Florida. He thinks KSC would be an ideal fit, combining the private testing ground that car companies prefer with the convenience of easy runway access for staff or customers. The Space Coast’s base of engineering talent and Orlando’s growing simulation and modeling industry add to the appeal.

Successful testing at KSC would allow the Florida Department of Transportation to certify that skyTran systems are safe for people to ride.

Nocera believes a test track could be built quickly, and hopes to see his BeachTran system operational in Clearwater as soon as 2019, built with $40 million in private funding. Rapid expansion across the region could follow.

“The technology has advanced so much in the last 10 years,” he said.

So has Maglev’s time arrived, more than 50 years after Jim Powell and Gordon Danby invented the technology they later unsuccessfully tried to commercialize with Maglev 2000 in Titusville?

Today, only one commercial Maglev Personal Rapid Transit system exists in the world, an impressive high-speed link between Shanghai’s airport and downtown, according to Paul Lewis, vice president of policy and finance at the Eno Center for Transportation, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

But China, Lewis said, continues to build out subways, rail lines and other conventional transit systems “because some of those traditional methods work pretty well.”

“It really feels like a solution in search of a problem,” he said of “ultra-modern” transportation solutions such as skyTran or the Hyperloop, which grab attention but have failed to gain traction through decades of proposals and studies.

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“I would love to see a big change in transportation,” said Lewis. “But given the track record of these kind of solutions over the past four or five decades, I’m really skeptical that this is going to have any impact in American or global transportation anytime soon.”

Overly optimistic cost projections are one reason, though, ventures like skyTran say they can build networks for a fraction as much as equivalent stretches of road or railway.

Maglev 2000 estimated its 20-mile Titusville-to-Port Canaveral line would cost $600 million and start service in 2009. It projected carrying more than 2 million passengers and generating $26 million in revenue a year by 2020 — much more if the line were extended 35 miles west to Orlando.

Malcolm McLouth of Cocoa Beach, who then chaired the Canaveral Port Authority board of commissioners, said the project was simply ahead of its time, just like so many commercial space initiatives.

"People didn’t think SpaceX could land a rocket on a barge out there, but by God they did," he said. "It’s good technology. It’s going to happen when the costs come down."

Maglev 2000 had “the potential to shine the technological spotlight on the Space Coast again,” the project summary said, and “will again let a locally developed product achieve national significance.”

A generation later, if it leases land at KSC, it will be skyTran’s turn to live up to that promise.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668

or jdean@floridatoday.com.

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