The public logistics system (PLS) is, along with electricity and oxygen, one of the few utilities still reliably provided by the Authority. A system of tunnels, on-street rails, funiculars, spiral risers and transporter bridges allow its autonomous narrow-gauge electric carriages to travel between any two points in the city in under a (decimal) hour.
Points, funiculars and other navigational systems are maintained by the Authority, while fleets of PL cars are generally maintained by private operating companies, often modifying them to suit user needs. Maintenance is cheap, thanks to an immense inventory of equipment and spare parts dating from the founding of the city, when overground lines were originally planned to link many of the Hither stations.
Traffic management is controlled centrally; cars can be requested from any networked terminal. Many small vendors and traders operate their own cars or hire them from larger operating companies on a long-term basis. Cars, often heavily customised, are frequently used as street stalls at weekly or half-weekly station-markets, rotating between different street markets on different days of the week.
Use of the PLS for passenger transport is officially frowned upon, but is increasingly popular in districts below Pinchbeck Street where other transport solutions are more limited. Although it is technically unchallenging to jailbreak a PL car and assume direct control of its motors, doing so is highly dangerous and presents both collision risks and navigational challenges when each individual set of points also needs to be controlled directly.
1 Comment
Glad I didn’t have to wait long to see what you meant about the train-cars