Representatives of the US Department of Transportation met in Washington DC last week for one and a half days to further advance their Memorandum of Cooperation with their Swedish counterparts on sustainable transportation. The officials from the two governments were joined by members of academia, consultants and suppliers/vendors. After joint meetings, subgroups met to discuss livability, multimodal station area planning, personal rapid transit/group rapid transit/automated transit networks (PRT/GRT/ATN) and railway technologies.
The four subgroups agreed that they all needed to collaborate since there is potentially considerable synergy between their areas of focus.
The PRT/GRT/ATN group agreed on a number of ways the two countries could work together to better understand and consider the potential for these technologies to help solve transportation issues. After the meetings, most members of this group toured the Morgantown PRT system after which Hans Larsen, San Jose Director of Transportation said, ““I (and I believe everyone in the group) thought the Morgantown PRT system tour was exceptional. The system serves a very important transportation function for the Morgantown community. It has high ridership and cost effective operations. And it provides inspiration that automated transit is not a far out idea for the future; it works with 40 year old technology. “
The results of the meetings include the following:
- Agreement between the Cities of San Jose and Uppsala to coordinate and share information about their respective efforts to investigate and potentially implement ATN systems.
- Undertake workshops, surveys and develop a website to find out what people in different cities are looking for in transportation solutions (including their potential desire for ATN and estimates of probable ATN ridership).
- A strategic plan should be developed outlining how ATN could be leveraged to the best advantage of transportation overall in the next 30 to 40 years.
- Pursue more university collaboration.
- Develop an ATN planning guidebook (probably through the Transportation Cooperative Research Program process).
- Explore partnerships with private industry on development and manufacturing of ATN systems
- Help facilitate further research and development of ATN demonstration projects
- Seek a more comprehensive USDOT consideration of ATN as a compliment to existing transportation systems involving FTA (transit), FHWA (highways and parking), FAA (airports), and FRA (high speed rail).
- Convene sessions on ATN at the 2013 meeting of the Transportation Research Board.
