A team of industrial design students at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette have put together a railway that wouldn't need stations to pick up passengers. Instead, system features driverless pods that are mounted to an elevated rail on an arm, which can lower the cabs down to pick up or drop off passengers anywhere along a route.

The idea came in part from roller coasters — though you don't have to worry about your pod speeding off through a loop — and a century-old monorail in Wuppertal, Germany, which has only had one major accident since 1903. The team hopes that a system such as their versatile monorail would cut down on the need for buses, which, with personnel, fuel, and maintenance costs, can be too costly to run effectively.

The Advocate, via Core77