Self-driving cars might not solve the problem of rush-hour traffic, and in cities with some of the worst commutes now–like L.A., where each driver wasted an average of 102 hours stuck in traffic last year–most commuters still don’t choose to take public transportation.

A startup called Transit X argues that we need a different form of mass transit to get people to stop driving. The company’s system, which it says will soon be deployed in the Philippines, will use networks of lightweight, automated, solar-powered pods. Each small pod is large enough for up to five people, and suspended from a narrow elevated rail 14 feet above the ground, tall enough that a semi truck can pass underneath. At a stop, passengers would enter their destination in an app or a kiosk, walk up to a small platform to board their own pod nearly immediately, and then take a nonstop ride to wherever they’re trying to go. (Each stop is designed to have an exit ramp for boarding, so it’s possible for other pods to pass by without stopping until their final destinations.)

“People don’t like to wait,” says Mike Stanley, CEO of Transit X. “They want to have a single seat and a private experience. So if you’re going to replace the dominant mode share of cars, you’d better give them something that they’ve already expressed a preference for rather than trying to force them into saying ‘use mass transit because it’s better for the environment.'”

The company hasn’t yet begun production of the pods, but has designed prototypes. Each carbon-fiber pod will weigh around 100 pounds, around 28 times less than an average car, and because they avoid the inefficiencies of car travel–which start and stop 20 times on a trip, and continually slow down and speed up, the pods will get the equivalent of 1,500 miles per gallon. That makes it possible to power the system with solar cells attached to the track. The support poles will hold large batteries; the pods will park where energy is available and charge while parked.

The stops are designed to take up less space on the sidewalk than bus stops–the poles could replace streetlights on sidewalks, and the system could provide lighting itself–but the company calculates that one track can carry the same number of passengers as a 12-lane highway. “If it can lure people away from cars through convenience, speed, and cost, Stanley envisions that roads could shrink, reshaping cities.

“You’re giving back road space to the city,” he says. “So think about the economic value of doubling the land area of your city.”

To work effectively, the pod systems would need to cover entire cities. “You have to think about a network, because the reason why we love roads is they go everywhere,” says Stanley. “Unless you can go everywhere, you’re not going to be able to replace them. So what we’re proposing is that we do this very fast shift, so you’re basically creating a sparse, road-like network over the entire metro area. Nobody else really understands that’s what you need, and you need to have the financing, the capacity. It’s not a multimodal future. It’s a universal mode.”