Transportation within a Habitat Forum: SSI-List
Thread: Transportation within a Habitat
Given the size is big enough that walking and bicycling are
impractical, and the need for moving heavy things around,
most vehicles would still have to be "individual".
The days of "mass transit" in the sense of the masses traveling
to factory and business centers for "mass production", which drove the
old railroads are past - "mass transit" in the sense of airlines is still
viable, but the analogy there with space settlements will be travel
through vacuum from one settlement (large concentrated population center)
to another. Most travel nowadays on Earth and in the future is driven
by individualized needs and schedules that mass transit systems
have difficulty supporting. But that doesn't mean everybody needs
to own their own "SUV" in a settlement. Something like a fuel-cell
version of Boston's "zipcar": http://www.zipcar.com/ would likely be
exactly what's needed.