The possibility of installing ‘hovering cars’ in Tel Aviv has been on the table for a while. The idea is that because they are elevated, they can reduce congestion in over-crowded cities.

A 1,640 foot elevated test loop will be installed on IAI’s campus in Lod. Each of the cars can hold two people and will travel up to 45 mph. In reality, if the test proves successful, they will travel at much greater speeds.

Users merely need to call up the pods, which arrive very quickly and deliver the user to their destination. In this way, people are not restricted to the sometimes rigid schedules of other forms of transportation.

And hey, they can be above the city looking down, which is more like adventure. The pods operate by magnetic levitation or maglev on what the BBC most accurately describes as a “monorail-type track.”

Related: skyTran – world’s first levitating transit system heads to Tel Aviv

It sounds crazy, it sounds ambitious, but this is real. skyTran has been developing this technology under the watchful guidance of NASA for some time.

Towards the end of next year, 2015, the test loop should be complete and then the technology has to be tested. I’m sure details of what this entail will emerge over the coming weeks and months. And then, if it is successful, which its investors think it will be, Tel Aviv residents will be the first guinea pigs.

India, California and France are chomping at the bits as well. And really, any overpopulated city or country will be watching carefully, because technology like this could be a game changer. But it won’t come cheap at $80 million.

Maybe the $10 cardboard bike from Israel is a better idea?

:: BBC

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Tel Aviv will be the first city to install a magnetic levitating transit system (maglev) designed by NASA and SkyTran, and the electric train in the sky will be almost entirely solar-powered.

The SkyTran Personal Rapid Transit system first proposed by inventor Douglas Malewicki in 1990 is currently under construction at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, Designboom reports.

Instead of relying on wheels and axles, the SkyTran consists of a series of levitating pods that are magnetically levitated from suspended rails lifted roughly 20 feet off the ground. Solar panels attached to the modular guideways will eventually power almost the entire system.

Passengers can call up a pod on their smartphones using mobile apps and get dropped off wherever they need to go.

Stations are simple with just a platform and a stairway every quarter of a mile or so, reducing the kind of infrastructure necessary to expand railway transportation and therefore mitigating public transportation’s overall environmental impact.

As an antidote to the Mediterranean city’s chronic traffic congestion and pollution, which also results in decreased productivity and sanity, Tel Aviv has appointed US consultancy Jenkins Gales & Martinez to bring the maglev system to Israel.

The pods have the ability to travel as fast as 150mph, but in Tel Aviv, they should transport passengers at a speed no faster than 100mph. And there won’t be any traffic jams at stations since a sidetrack will allow other pods to pass.

SkyTran CEO Jerry Sanders says that a standard SkyTran trip will be more expensive than a bus ride, but faster, and cheaper than a taxi ride. Other cities in Israel are also considering importing this futuristic transportation system.

In the meantime, 14 percent of Tel Aviv’s residents have taken up cycling in order to reduce their carbon footprint and avoid traffic.

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