Anyone who has attended a Carolina Hurricanes game or a rock concert at PNC Arena knows the drill: Quickly exit the venue, find your car and hope that your wait to exit the parking lot doesn’t take as long as the game or the concert.

Marshall Brain – author (“How Stuff Works”), entrepreneur, professor – believes it doesn’t have to be that way. Imagine a fleet of small, driverless vehicles shuttling people in organized fashion to downtown, North Hills and Research Triangle Park, he says. Software coordinates the flow of these vehicles, which clear the crowds quickly and efficiently.

“No more bottlenecks,” Brain said.

Such a system is what Brain, director of the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program at N.C. State University and co-founder of transportation startup EcoPRT, aims to build.

EcoPRT would operate on guideways running overhead constructed in existing rights-of-way. The automated system would cut down on time spent on traffic while cutting down on emissions, fuel consumption and the overall expenses of owning and maintaining a car. Brain and EcoPRT co-founder Seth Hollar, also a professor in the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program, presented their transportation vision on Tuesday night during a Research Triangle Cleantech Cluster meeting held in Marbles Children’s Museum in downtown Raleigh.

Sustainable transportation is a key concept for Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO), said Wes Sylvester, North America Internet of Things sales leader for the company. As an example, he pointed to Chicago, which has rolled out a parking app. The app helps drivers find parking spaces. It also makes it easy for the city to ticket drivers. The city saves on the expense of having meter readers drive around and the ease in ticketing has turned the app into a revenue stream for the city. Other cities are using systems that tell city buses which routes to take, saving on time and fuel. The municipal systems all run on a network.

“These things seem way, out there, but really, they’re here today,” Sylvester said. “The Internet of Things is here today.”

EcoPRT started from conversations between Brain and Hollar in the fall of 2013 that revealed a shared interest in addressing transportation problems. The conversations led to designs that became EcoPRT. Hollar designed software that coordinated the movement of vehicles. A simulation of 500 students exiting a class showed EcoPRT could clear the area in under 10 minutes.

Brain calls EcoPRT “the world’s first entrepreneurial transportation system” unsupported by any state or federal government subsidies. He envisions the system being fully supported by fares, which could reimburse the cost of the infrastructure over time. The infrastructure would be cheap compared to existing mass transportation construction costs. A subway line costs $100 million per mile, the company says. Light rail costs between $50 million and $70 million per mile. EcoPRT aims for infrastructure costs of $1 million per mile. Each EcoPRT vehicle would cost about $10,000.

The stations would not take up a large footprint; Brain says they could be built in existing parking decks or even in buildings, Brain said. The network can be built out according to market demand. If Cameron Village wants bring more N.C. State students to the shopping center it can fund a spur connecting to the campus network. Glenwood South could follow. North Hills has already expressed interest, Brain said.

The first step is a prototype vehicle at N.C. State, work being done largely by students. Hollar and Brain are also seeking financing for the infrastructure on campus to demonstrate how it would work. The vehicles are small and intended to carry one or two passengers at a time. N.C. State already has allocated a route for the pilot system. EcoPRT estimates this pilot would cost $3 million. Brain and Hollar have spoken with potential sponsors, banks and venture capitalists. Financing could come from some combination of the three, Brain said.

Brain and Hollar have made the rounds showing their vision for EcoPRT. The pair presented during the Research Triangle Park Foundation’s RTP 180 event in May. Hollar has also shared the concept with transportation directors in Raleigh and Los Angeles.

“We’re ready for liftoff,” Hollar said. “We see N.C. State as a seed for moving this forward.”

Cary’s smart meters

Also presenting at the Cleantech Cluster meeting was the Town of Cary, which is seeing benefit from smart water meters that the town has rolled out. This automated system replaced a staff of 11 workers who went out and took monthly readings of water usage.

Cary Finance Director Karen Mills said that the system gives real-time data on water usage. Cary is just scratching the surface of what it can do with that data, which it analyzes with SAS software. But Mills said that so far the information improves water efficiency initiatives and helps customers reduce their water usage, which reduces their their water bills. Cary invested $18 million into the system, which is expected to save $28 million over 17 years.

“It’s working, it’s better than we were expecting and it’s saving money,” Mills said.