Imagine commuting to work in a "pod."

Just pull up to the pod entrance ramp, pay a toll by inserting your card into an ATM-like machine, and drive your car on board. Punch your destination into a touch pad computer screen, then sit back and enjoy the 120-mph ride as you surf the Internet or read the newspaper on your way to work.

No delays. No crowd. No traffic.

Within a decade, commuters could be traveling on such a personal electric rapid transit system, or PERTS. It would use electromagnetic levitation to move cars along a steel or concrete track with no moving parts.

Right now, it's just a 1/40-scale prototype on a short section of metal track in a transportation lab at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Each pod, short for "pallet on demand," would be 16 feet to 17 feet long and eight feet wide -- big enough for an SUV. One pod would hold about 6,500 pounds. The commuters would drive their cars into pods at a pickup station. Wheel clamps would secure either the front or back tires, locking the car into place. Drivers could then get out of their cars and move around the pod, which would have an Internet connection, telephone, radio, and TV. The pods would ride quickly on steel guideways above existing highways.

The personal transit system's researchers envision three lanes of electromagnetic highway. The middle lane would be used as a service lane in case a pod broke down. The pods would be 80 feet apart. Their distance would be controlled by radar adjustment from a control tower. When at their destinations, motorists would drive their cars out of the pods and onto ramps at exit stations. The estimated cost to the driver: 30 cents a mile.

How does it work? The prototype pod is loaded with wire coils that become magnetized. There are eight coils, two at each corner. The coils at each corner levitate the pod, which puts a positive charge on other coils and moves it forward.

The technology is similar to magnetic levitation trains in Japan and Germany, but those tracks have moving parts. Virginia Tech's innovation lies in the electronics. Unlike maglev trains, the PERTS' parts reside totally in the pod and are controlled remotely.

"We use a local area network," Ramu said. "The computer sends the information about changing speeds, starting, stopping, and all of those kinds of instructions. And [it] could be thought of as a control tower, if necessary, to monitor the traffic flow and find the status of each pod, because we want to automatically diagnose every pod's situation -- health -- every instant."

Ramu says the system would cost about one-third the price of building a four-lane concrete highway. He says a 20-mile stretch of the personal transit system could handle 55,000 cars a day. He estimates that it would take about three years to build.