An article about the SkyWay transport in Sharjah has been published on the website of the UAE's leading automotive blog Carsblog. However, the journalists have made several mistakes that relate to the company's current and future projects. We analyze these inaccuracies in our publication.
First of all, we note that in the text, the authors use the wording«Sky Pod Sharjah project». In fact, this is a collective name for the string transport at the Testing Center in Sharjah and future commercial routes.
Previously, a similar wording — Dubai Sky Pod — appeared in relation to another emirate. In 2019, during the World Government Summit, the project with this name was presented to the Emir of Dubai, the Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates by RTA (Dubai Traffic and Transport Authority).
Now let us deal with specific errors in the Carsblog publication:
Since 2021, the 2-km string track has been operating on the territory of the Sharjah Research and Technology Park.
This is not quite true. The test string track has indeed been built on the territory of the Sharjah Technology Park, but its length is 400 meters. The works on two 2.4-km tracks are still ongoing.
By May 2022, the company is to complete the construction of the 2.4-km track. The track will allow the passenger modules to move at speeds up to 500 km/h.
The information that by 2022 the company will have completed the construction of the 2.4-kilometer string track has not previously been announced on the company's official resources or in the media. We can neither confirm nor deny this information.
As a reminder: now, all supports have already been installed for the heavy tracks in Sharjah. The next stage of the construction - the installation of rails - has been suspended due to the pandemic. At the same time, past photos from Sharjah show that tons of steel wire for the string rail from the Belgian company Bekaert have already been delivered to the Testing Centre.
The second part of the statement is not true. To test the string transport at a speed of 500 km/h, there is needed a track with a length of at least 22 km. Now, the company developer is just looking for a suitable site for construction. Not only the UAE, but also Belarus, where negotiations are already underway, are considered as options.
In conclusion, we note that despite several inaccuracies, the article still provides information about the advantages of the SkyWay transport, which may be of interest to foreign readers and potential investors of the project. We are sure that with the popularization of the technology, the quality of such publications will increase.
The original article can be read at Carsblog website.