The City of Ithaca became a  hub for international eco-innovation earlier this week by hosting the second annual Podcar City Sustainable Transportation Conference, which ended yesterday.

Students, professors and Ithaca residents were joined by visitors from all over the world to discuss the possibilities of Personal Rapid Transit, a computer-controlled electric transportation system capable of operating without human drivers. The first conference was held last year in Uppsala, Sweden. Holding one in Ithaca marks the city’s commitment to sustainability.

PRT aims to avoid transportation congestion by running eco-friendly cars along a track above the ground, much like a monorail system. The system ultimately reduces the amount of carbon emissions released into the atmosphere compared to regular, fossil fuel–burning vehicles.

Fernando DeArogan, staff director of the Ithaca-Tompkins County Transportation Council, said the small, lightweight vehicles, known as podcars, carry anywhere from four to six passengers and bring passengers nonstop to their exact location of choice. Other types of PRT run at ground level on designated roadways.

DeArogan said podcars are just an idea for sustainable transportation in the U.S., but many other countries are working on implementing PRT systems.

“It holds a lot of promise and is getting a lot of interest from different companies and people who are in the field,” he said. “We want to bring better ride-sharing opportunities, revamp old systems, have the transit be as efficient as possible.”

Colin Howard, student coordinator for Ithaca College’s Resource and Environmental Management Program, said everyone should start thinking about monopolizing resources for transportation purposes, and now is the time for our “individualized western society” to make a change to sustainable transit.

“We are starting to see we really don’t have the resources to keep it up,” he said. “In general, transportation and the way we make things in this country is pretty energy intensive and really resource intensive right now.”

DeArogan said the planning processes for implementing new transportation systems take years to develop. Therefore, plans for the future need to be considered now.

“When you think about 20 years in the future, you’ve got to consider what are our potential future technologies,” he said. “This is clearly one that needs to be taken into account.”

If the implementation of the PRT system was seriously considered, changes in town aesthetics and the system’s feasibility are expected community concerns. Howard said the system would win his vote as long as citizens’ views were seriously taken into account.

Speakers at the conference expressed that in order for systems like PRT to work, it requires those in charge of operations to work closely with the community, making the entire process a community-collaborative effort.

During the next year, DeArogan said there will be many opportunities for citizens to comment and participate in such important transportation decisions for Tompkins County.

Rick Manning, an Ithaca resident of 20 years who attended the conference Tuesday, said the vision of podcars and PRT is a reasonable solution to the environmental problems facing Ithaca and the rest of the world, but the city cannot overlook the potential problems if put into place.

“There are a lot of potential complications with funding and where structures hit the ground and the impact on the housing and businesses and the streets,” Manning said. “There [are] a lot of details that could prove difficult to implement, but I think it’s an intriguing long-term idea that could be part of the solution.”

DeArogan, along with many of the speakers at the conference, stressed that the idea of PRT is not a new one. Some areas in and around Sweden, home to many of the conference’s attendants, are either testing or installing PRT-type systems. DeArogan said Americans might consider podcars as a viable option as gas prices are still on the rise.

“It’s been a long time in coming, and I guess we needed the incentive of $4 a gallon of gas to make things happen,” DeArogan said. “It is reaching a new level of importance because I think people are realizing that we need to move beyond the fossil-fuel energy that we have — and we are looking at the alternative ideas.”