Mass Effect is one of those sci-fi series with only one fictional technology, and a whole lot of development on that, and on the stories that enables them to tell. And that fictional technology is the mass effect. In Mass Effect there’s a fictional element called element 0, or eezo, that humans found out in space. Eezo can alter the mass of other objects when electrically stimulated. Eezo can give a spaceship negative mass and enable faster than light travel. It can reduce the mass of a bullet to almost zero as it’s fired from the chamber of a gun, and return it to normal going at an extreme speed. It enables artificial gravity. Humans who are exposed to eezo can gain telekinetic powers. There’s a community of aliens out there, and they also use eezo in their technology. There’s a ton of politics, philosophical commentary, and secrets out in the galactic community and its history.
These pods are only used on rails with very low ridership. They would switch to a train if ridership increased.
Look at it this way: you can have a train that has a capacity of 100 people, but it only runs once a day due to the low demand, and only 2 people want to ride it at that time of day…Or you can have 10 pods, which do not require as much railway maintenance, and they can carry the 10 people who actually want to use this railway, completely on demand.
Yeah, a train is better if you want to move ten thousand people a day at peak hour. But this is a cheaper way to move ten people at different times across a day. And it’s a cheaper way of inducing the demand that would justify the more efficient kind of expansion.