Parking rails with recharging facilities

10,000 parking rails are established in the 100 districts corresponding to 100 parking rails per district of 3 x 3 miles. The rails are primarily located near interesting destinations, shopping malls, schools, etc. The distance between them average 500 m. If they were evenly distributed, there would always be max. 250 m to the nearest rail, but on average only 125 m. For most users distances will be shorter, since the rails are located where the need is greatest.

The 10,000 parking rails each with room for 6 RUFs can accommodate 60,000 RUFs at a time. This is regarded as sufficient, since the RUFs will be circulating to an extent, both in the streets and on the rail network.

The 25,000 public RUFs will be used on average 10 times a day for trips of 15 minutes' duration. During a period of 8 hours they will travel for 150 minutes = 2.5 hours (of which 1 hour is typically used for rail travel ). 1.5 hours is used for street travel at a typical speed of 25 mph = 38 miles. The remaining time (5.5 hours) is used for parking and recharging. 6 hours of normal charging correspond to max. range (30 miles). 5,5 + 1 (on rail) = 6.5 hours' charging provides an extra range of approx. 34 miles.

The RUF starts fully charged (range = 30 miles) from home. 3 miles is typically driven from home to the rail. The rail trip will recharge the batteries, but only slightly because of the short time used on the rail (typically 7.5 min.). When the RUF arrives at the parking rail near the work destination, the RUF has a range of > 26 miles. After 10 trips a loss of a 4 miles range is experienced, so that once the home journey starts a range of 22 miles remains typically. On arrival home > 19 miles will be left. The many charging cycles strain the battery which is supposed to be replaced every two years ($2,000 each time = $50 million for 25,000 RUFs).