JPods3D — Design Transit Networks in 3D

See It Before You Build It

JPods3D turns SketchUp into a transit design studio. Place stations on satellite terrain, connect guideways, validate the physics, and watch pods move — all before breaking ground.

For Students

Learn transit engineering by building networks in your own neighborhood. Place stations at real locations, connect them with solar-powered guideways, and simulate passenger flow. The plugin teaches physics, geometry, and infrastructure design through hands-on 3D modeling.

For Planners

Evaluate JPods networks against real terrain, traffic data, and crash corridors. Generate bills of materials. Test capacity at stations. Export simulation data for economic analysis. See what your city looks like with solar-powered transit above the streets.

8 Steps to a Working Network

Students build a complete JPods network in eight steps — from geolocating the model to watching pods animate along the guideways.

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Geolocate

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🏛

Place Stations

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📌

Calc CPs

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🔌

Connect

→

🚩

Waypoints

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🔧

Build

→

✅

Review

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▶

Animate

Built-In Intelligence

JPods3D includes an agent team that validates, routes, and balances your network automatically.

🛰

Noelle

Network validator and load balancer. Reviews every build for safety, connectivity, and clearance height. Flags defects before you animate.

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Natalie

Router and trip planner. Assigns passengers to paths, balances demand across stations, and calculates travel times through the network.

🚘

Nora

Vehicle navigator. Controls individual pods along guideways, manages station parking, handles merges and diverges in real time.

See It in Action

JPods3D networks designed on real terrain in cities across America. Click any video to watch it full size.

▶ JPods in 90 Seconds

The concept, the technology, the mission — in a minute and a half.

JPods Summary

🏛 Mall of America — Bloomington, MN

An 8-station network connecting IKEA, Mall of America, hotels, and Walmart. The first complete JPods3D demonstration network.

Network Design

Station Naming

Capacity & BOM

♪ Brighter Days

What does a city look like when solar-powered transit replaces car dependency?

Brighter Days

🏛 Greenville, SC

A city-scale network designed using crash data corridors and MeshMobility analysis. JPods guideways follow where the crashes are worst.

Greenville Network

🏛 Secaucus, NJ

Connecting the Meadowlands — transit where density and traffic demand alternatives to highways.

Secaucus Network

🏛 Asheville, NC

Mountain terrain challenges every transit system. JPods3D handles elevation changes with terrain-following guideways and variable-height columns.

Asheville Network

What Is JPods?

JPods is a circulatory system for a city. Blood does not run once a week — it runs continuously. JPods moves small packets streaming resources to where they are needed on demand.

— The Physical Internet

Middle Mile Transit

JPods is the WiFi of the Physical Internet — station-to-station, neighborhood-to-neighborhood. Solar-powered guideways above the streets, 500 kg pods on demand. Last-mile modes (bikes, walking, scooters) bridge from stations to front doors.

Cargo & Waste

Not just passengers. Pre-sorted goods from warehouses to neighborhood stations by day. Waste streamed continuously out of the city for sorting. Fresh waste sorted on arrival supports far higher recycling rates than weekly collection of rotted, compressed, mixed bags.

5×5

Standard
(5x energy profit, 5x land use)

500 kg

Pod capacity

4.6 m

Clearance height

Gallons of gas

Data-Driven Network Design

MeshMobility analyzes crash data, traffic counts, and census data to determine where JPods networks are needed most. Crash corridors become guideway corridors. Walk circles become station placement.

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Crash Data

FARS fatal crash records mapped by location. Red circles show where people are dying on roads. Guideways follow crash corridors.

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Traffic Counts

AADT data shows vehicle volume. High-count corridors with high crash rates are the strongest candidates for JPods networks.

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Walk Circles

15-minute walk radius from each station. When circles overlap with full coverage, the network serves the whole city. More doors, not bigger doors.