Like most people I love to travel but hate the act of traveling. Just getting to the airport in a major city can be a real adventure sometimes as you literally transverse every mode of transportation available. Take getting to JFK airport in New York City as an example. If you’re staying in a hotel downtown you may have to first take a cab to a subway station, where you’d then transfer at Penn Station to a Long Island Rail Road train, where you’d then transfer at Jamaica Station for a Tram to JFK, where you’d then board a plane. If you include any walking you may be doing that’s a grand total of five different modes of transportation you needed to use to get there. That’s cray cray.
Thankfully, there may soon be a better way to travel that would cut out the middle man. No more schlepping to the airport for the airport will be coming to you. That’s right. In the future you may board you plane at the train station since your train will also be your plane.
The concept comes to us from French entrepreneur Maurice Ricci of Akka Technologies and is currently being pitched to Boeing. And, truth be told, doesn’t sound all that far-fetched.
As Futurism reports, “With its wings attached, the craft doesn’t look all that different from the planes soaring in and out of today’s airports. The primary difference is that the wings connect to one another over the plane’s cylindrical body, rather than connecting to each side of the plane separately.
Once on the ground, the body of the flying train separates from those wings and the cockpit, dropping onto a platform positioned on tracks. It’s then free to ride the rails. According to the Bloomberg report, passengers would board and disembark the craft at train stations, so they wouldn’t have to find alternate ways to travel to and from airports.”
One would have to think that this concept would greatly reduce road congestion in and around airports, vastly reduce the amount of time travelers need to set aside to travel to airports, and lead to an increase in the amount of traveling that people would be willing to undertake leading to boosts in tourism around the world. Seen in that light, this idea would surely seem to be one of the greatest ever.
Is a plane train the Greatest Idea Ever?
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