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PRT
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The 30-year old prototype PRT built by Boeing in the 1970s still runs at West Virginia University. It has an unblemished record of safety at reasonable O&M costs. Although students sometimes exchange wild stories about shutdowns on their five-station PRT, it is vital to their lives. Officials are planning to enhance and expand it in a town-gown cooperation that have been rare in the past.
The Morgantown PRT has off-line stations – the key to non-stop service and PRT functionality. Trips are scheduled in real-time. A passenger (or small group of passengers) gets a personalized ride without stopping at midway stations. A rigid definition of PRT requires that vehicles hold no more than six passengers, better yet four or three. Travel is non-stop. Transfers between lines are not necessary. A trip can be scheduled non-stop anywhere in the network. Just as email has superior aspects to mail, PRT is e-cabs that are more effective than conventional cabs.
Sweden has enlarged the debate over PRT by detailed analysis and the introduction of the broader concept “podcars”. This stresses the movement of goods as well as passengers on vehicle modules that can be lowered to street level for off-system use. Swedes have studied and sketched hypothetical PRT concepts since the 1960s. Recently world-smart Koreans of the conglomerate Posco, having spun off Vectus, have built and now run a test track in Uppsala. This provides the proverbial PRT tires for interested officials and consultants to kick.
With both Dutch and French engineering, autonomous vehicles sometimes called robocars – are carrying passengers in a handful of protected parking lots and pedestrian settings. Another light version of PRT will go into service next year at the huge Terminal 5 complex that recently opened at Heathrow Airport west of London. It will link distant parking lots to a corner of the cavernous T5 parking garage. Like the Morgantown PRT, Heathrow’s initial phase will have only five stations. One will be at the carpark and four in the remote parking lot some four kilometers away.
All these developments diminish the still-heard argument that PRT is an unproven and therefore an unviable concept.
Many other R&D efforts have test tracks or models in various stages of development. One U.S. firm has evolved controls and simulation software that can assist in the layout of networks, cost calculations and capacity issues. Remember, this involves an easily expandable and modifiable network. A variety of configurations can and should be examined, and the calculations become elaborate, requiring computational sophistication.
Denver-based PRT Consulting is active analyzing airport and other applications.
The Advanced Transit Association (ATRA) has organized a seminar of the urban design issues surround PRT. It will explore issues of density, public spaces, building massing, integration of stations and guideways into buildings, and service parameters at a seminar on August 22 at Harvard University. To learn more and register, visit www.advancedtransit.org.
The Institute for Sustainable Transportation (IST) is based in Stockholm to offer visioning, planning and analysis services to cities, towns, and others eager to explore the advantages of next-generation APMs. IST has convened a conference in Ithaca, New York September 14-16 to explore international strategies to move forward.
