Modutram recently opened the station portion of their new full-scale test track in Guadalajara, Mexico thus becoming the third PRT supplier to have an operating test track. The system is currently running with one vehicle and successfully demonstrates switching capabilities.

Station and associated test track

The Modutram program is funded by the Mexican Government and is undertaken with university cooperation. The intent is to develop and commercialize a PRT system ideally suited to Mexican applications but capable of also being deployed elsewhere. The focus is on costs and $6M per one-way track-mile is the approximate cost target.

Vehicle approaching station

A variety of vehicles is being planned with the initial vehicle being designed for slow, short trips with standees. A hybrid vehicle is used in order to reduce the number of expensive batteries required. Electric motor and internal combustion engine options can function completely independently of each other. Vehicles have four-wheel steering and closely follow guideway sidewalls which are constructed to a 2mm lateral tolerance. Sidewall following is accomplished by two guide wheels mounted just ahead of and behind each road wheel. Physical following was selected over remote sensing in order to reduce development time. Remote sensing could be added at a later date.

Hybrid vehicle

A unique operational feature is that the vehicles will keep moving slowly through stations without completely stopping. This operation has proved successful when tested with handicapped passengers. Passengers alight as soon as the vehicle enters the station while others board just before it leaves the station. If no one boards, or if boarding is incomplete, the vehicle will stop in the station. Stations are arranged so as to keep boarding and alighting passengers separate (even to the point of having separate staircases).

System characteristics

Elevated track. Note superelevation.

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.

I have recently spent quite a bit of time meeting with and/or discussing PRT with different early-stage suppliers. The common theme seems to be that there is just too much testosterone in this business! Almost every vendor strongly believes that their solution is by far the best and that all others have fatal or near-fatal flaws. Gentlemen (there are no ladies in this group), it is in your own best interests to be a bit more humble and to not discount your competitors, they are generally smarter than you give them credit for.

Oftentimes when a competitor’s weaknesses are pointed out to me, I am aware that they are working on improvements and/or that these same weaknesses are not as serious as made out and/or are in fact strengths in some situations. I hope that all vendors are aware that marketing one’s strengths is more effective than marketing the competition’s weaknesses.

Those vendors who are in the very early stages should note that it has been many years since I have heard any representative of the three  vendors with commercially-available systems make a derogatory statement about any other! In fact these three vendors cooperate well in their efforts related to the Advanced Transit Association.

The table below attempts to summarize the stage of development that the significant vendors are in. I have no intention of mis-characterizing anyone’s efforts. If I have omitted or incorrectly categorized a company or two, please let me know. An open guideway system is one where the vehicles steer themselves (as opposed to a captive bogey system where the guideway steers the vehicles). Engineering design means more than pretty illustrations on a website. By Test Track I mean an active full-scale track demonstrating switching. A commerical project is one for which the vendor is being paid and is under contract (I realize I am giving ULTra-Fairwood the benefit of the doubt on Amritsar).

Loving the pod!

It’s a fantastic idea, it really does promote not only a great image of Heathrow adopting cutting edge technology but is also fast and convenient!

Used the Heathrow Pod at Terminal 5 on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week. I was delighted with it. The staff were helpful and obliging, the Pod call station was very easy to use, the instructions in the Pod itself were very good and clear. The whole process was quick and efficient, it was much easier than taking the bus, and quicker.

Journey starts in my own personal pod at #Heathrow. Makes the airport fun again.

Finally got to use the LHR T5 pods this morning. Truly excellent!

Love T5 & those pods that take you to and from the terminal

Absolutely love the T5 pods.

At LHR t5 – they have personal driverless pods to take you from parking to check in. Fantastic things!

The pod train from business parking to t5 is surely the most exciting form of transport I’ve been on in a long time

The Heathrow Pod – we live in the future! Wider application pls!

On Sunday, November 28^th, the Masdar PRT system opened to the public. To quote Larry Fabian, 2getthere, the manufacturer, got there. 2getthere operates the system with the support of Singapore Mass Rapid Transit. Masdar City is a new carbon-free city being developed adjacent to Abu Dhabi in the UAE.

The system has 10 passenger and 3 freight vehicles serving 2 passenger and 3 freight stations connected by approximately one mile of track. The system is in operation 18 hours a day, seven days a week serving the Masdar Institute of Technology. Trips take about 2 and a half minutes and are presently free of charge. Average wait times are expected to be about 30 seconds.

Masdar PRT Station

Robbert Lohmann, Marketing Director for 2getthere, is quick to point out that the elaborate stations are not necessarily reflective of what a station should look like, but more an indication of what one could look like, if desired.

As mentioned previously, it is unlikely that this system will be extended throughout the entire Masdar City as originally planned. However, it is hoped it will be expanded beyond the extent of the present rather limited system.

The Heathrow ULTra PRT system recently achieved 99.6% availability during four weeks of passenger trials. We look forward to receiving availability results from Masdar. It will bode well for PRT if they are in a similar range. To put 99.6% in perspective, it means 4 trips in a thousand do not go as planned. This is six times more reliable than transit level of service A for transit reliability as defined in TRB’s Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) Report 100: Transit Capacity and Quality of Service Manual, where 25 trips per thousand are permitted to be late.

Masdar City, near Abu Dhabi in the UAE, set out to be a sustainable, zero-carbon, zero-waste community. Part of the premise was to exclude automobiles entirely. The city was going to rely mostly on a personal rapid transit system for internal mobility. A PRT system with some 80 stations and thousands of vehicles was planned. Unfortunately, recent  (October 2010) announcements indicate that this plan has now been scaled back and the PRT system will be confined to a pilot system or a small system serving the area close to the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology. This is a blow to PRT proponents, but is PRT to blame for the setback?

Since PRT does not mix well with street level traffic, most urban plans call for an elevated PRT system with a very small ground-level footprint. This was considered at Masdar, but there was a chicken and egg problem. If the PRT was built first, it would be difficult to integrate it in the buildings to follow. Worse, all the costs would have to be borne by the developer. If the buildings were built first, they could be planned to accommodate and integrate the PRT system, and the building developers could possibly absorb station and other costs. Building developers were slow in coming forward and so the latter, preferable, option was not feasible, although it could possibly still have been accomplished by imposing carefully-planned building requirements (not easily accomplished in the prevailing culture). This, coupled with a desire to provide a pedestrian-friendly “ground” level, led to the decision to raise the pedestrian level, some 7 meters above the ground level to form a “podium” level, and to build the PRT system and the utilities in the undercroft formed below. Future buildings could then be constructed on the podium level with few restrictions.

2getthere PRT vehicle in the Masdar undercroft

Putting PRT in the undercroft has proven problematic because:

• The PRT routing was constrained to follow surface street routing, which is deliberately discontinuous to help prevent windy conditions.
• The PRT routing is the same as that for special delivery (and, possibly, emergency) vehicles – violating one of the principles of PRT, which is to separate it from other traffic.
• There is no way of enticing building developers to share the costs of the PRT stations and other elements.

The podium decision was made in more prosperous times. It is an expensive way to build a city, and current economic considerations have resulted in the decision being made not to extend the podium concept and the PRT system throughout the city. Thus the podium/undercroft decision underlies the decision not to extend the PRT system. Hopefully, the PRT system will soon come into successful public service, indicating that it can at least do the first part of what it was acquired to do.

Masdar is apparently considering electric cars and/or buses instead of the PRT system. It is difficult to imagine how this can be accomplished without revisiting the design parameters for the streets which are narrow and discontinuous. It may make much more sense to take a hard look at how an elevated PRT system could work and what it would take to merge it with the undercroft system.

Wednesday – Thursday 22^nd – 23^rd September 2010

I attended the morning tour of the PRT system thereby missing the first four Wednesday presentations. I had previously seen and ridden on the entire system. However, I had not seen the T-5 station since it was completed. It is an elegant and well-designed facility that appears to have ample space. Strolling around it, one appreciates some of the difficulties of designing for a system few will initially understand. For example, when passengers read “wait here for an empty berth” will they understand what a berth is and be able to determine where one ends and another begins? During the remainder of the tour and the ride the following morning (the system was closed for track maintenance on Wednesday morning), I paid attention to the opinions of others. Perhaps most telling was the comment of a Bombardier representative who indicated the system was much better than he had expected. I was interested in better evaluating the ride quality which, while not perfect, is definitely better than that in the back seat of a taxi.

Sven Beller, PTV AG, discussed the adaptation of existing tools such as VISUM and VISSIM to simulate PRT systems. Necessary adaptations can be scripted through the Application Programming Interface using other tools such as Excel’s Visual Basic for Applications.

Joerg Schweizer, Universita di Bologna presented work he is doing on a PRT Capacity Manual. The manual is intended to provide performance models that are quick and easy to apply with a focus on station operations.

Jochen Rabe, Associate, Ove Arup & Partners Ltd., said that comprehensive PRT networks covering entire cities may not be realistic. Local authorities must compare the transport service benefits of PRT with the visual impact and potential privacy loss.

Gabriele Giustiniani, Researcher, University of Rome ‘La Spienza’, outlined a CityMobil project with a round trip of 1.61km, 11 stops and 6 cybercars. He found the mode share for the cybercars was 10% more than that for a mini bus with the same schedule.

Steve Perliss, Lea+Elliott moderated a Procurement Workshop which included addresses from Bo Olsson, Senior Strategist, Trafikverket, David Holdcroft, PRT Manager, BAA, Martin Lowson, President, ULTra PRT, Robbert Lohman, Commercial Director, 2getthere and Jorgen Gustafsson, Managing Director, Vectus Ltd. Olsson described a two-step procurement process (first qualifications, then price) and said numerous questions must be answered before committing to a procurement process. Holdcroft described the process used to select ULTra. He said they received 15 responses. Lowson and Lohman implied they approved of the BAA procurement process. Perliss said it is important to give responders time to build teams and to bring them in early to get feedback. Ahuja said this is not possible in India where the tender period is limited to 6-8 weeks. Lowson and Lohmann agreed that the supplier must have control of the structural specifications to ensure ride quality and vehicle interfaces are adequate. Gustafsson said clear roles and responsibilities with simple interfaces and a lean organization able to make quick decisions (especially on the client side) were important. He said the Suncheon project will comprise 11km, 40 vehicles with 3M annual visitors. It will be mainly point-to-point and is being financed by Vectus who will receive an annual stipend. Muller pointed out that the workshop seemed to be moving towards guidance for consultants in preparing tender documents and that guidance for owners in moving from considering to implementing PRT was perhaps also needed. Lowson stated that, in his opinion, the ASCE APM standards are insufficient on the topic of safety and that safety clearance requirements vary greatly from country to country and even within some countries like the U.S.A.

Simon Babes, Director, Colin Buchanan, discussed a potential role for PRT in the Chinese megacity of Shanghai. He presented an analysis of a 20km, 20 station PRT system with 500 vehicles and 67,000 daily trips connecting a business park to a metro station. He anticipated fare revenues plus savings in shuttle bus operating costs could cover PRT operating costs and pay back the capital investment in five to ten years.

Richard Caple, Engineer Project Manager, Daventry District Council, said the major concerns for the Daventry PRT project include: visual intrusion; cost; anti-social behavior; ease of use and the complexity of the network. There is no funding presently available but he expects the system will happen eventually. He briefly outlined a document called Outlines for the Implementation of PRT in Urban Areas.

Peter Muller, President, PRT Consulting (the author), suggested that the true benefits of PRT will only be realized when it is used to develop entirely new cities built with a focus on ideal living conditions along with sustainability. He outlined how his vision for a “perfect” city could be enabled by PRT and recommended that those attempting to retrofit existing cities with PRT might want to keep this vision in mind, as something to strive towards. A poll of the audience revealed that about 75% would like to live in such a city.

Colin Bates, Managing Director, Customer Champions reported on a study of ULTra’s previous leads and key contacts. They found that the key barriers to sales were: risk aversion; desire not to be first (Heathrow will help but is not always applicable); urban developments are impacted by politics; PRT is not understood by decision makers; there is a lack of comparable data and proven benefits.

Malcolm Buchanan, Director, Colin Buchanan, summarized the conference. He asked if roads and cars or rail networks could eventually become PRT networks.

Tuesday 21^st September 2010

The Conference was opened by John Holland-Kaye, Commercial Director, BAA Airports, who said that the PRT system is obtaining 100% records for reliability. He was excited by the chance to create a new form of technology that will change the way people travel.

Fraser Brown, Head of Travel Services, Heathrow Airport Ltd – BAA, listed numerous advantages of the PRT system including: predictable; reduction in journey times; more than 70% have no waiting; reductions in emissions, noise and congestion; improved office rents, land values & availability as well as road safety. He is looking forward to a future where the passenger needs no local knowledge – they will not need to know where they have to go, just what they want to do. The system should be able to account for congestions, last-minute changes and delays in flight schedules.

David Holdcroft, PRT Manager, BAA, outlined completed and on-going system testing and passenger trials. He said that they have found out from passenger trials to date that passengers like the system. They also have learned that there are many aspects of the system that can be improved and have been tweaking such things as the audio message volume, door timings and button sequences. The on-going daily trials include passengers with luggage and are being used to monitor trends in the system status. The recent emergency situation rehearsal provided valuable lessons including that it resulted in duplicative responses from multiple jurisdictions. The system will open once BAA is satisfied with the results of daily trials and full integration of the PRT system with all other airport systems that could interact with it in any way. The integration process involves safety integration, new and updated operations protocols and familiarization of all potentially impacted airport staff.

Mark Griffiths, Head of Operations, ULTra PRT, continued the theme David Holdcroft started and told of unexpected passenger behaviors, such as going to an empty station berth to call a vehicle because they mistakenly assumed the one already waiting in a berth must be broken. He said they have a core staff of 24 for the 24/7 operation. Batteries must be recycled after about 3 months. Opportunity charging in stations allows a full battery pack to keep a vehicle running for several hours.

The Masdar PRT system had a two-hour test last week with 10 vehicles and 25 passengers according to Robbert Lohmann, Commercial Director, 2getthere. He said they put doors on one side of the vehicles only because doors tend to be problematic. However, this has required some special station layouts. When asked about rumors that Masdar is considering abandoning the PRT system for electric cars or other solutions, he said that Masdar is still committed to the PRT system but continually reconsidering their options because of the state of the economy.

Dario Menichetti with Mott MacDonald discussed the modeling of the MASDAR PRT system. They used conventional transportation modeling tools as well as a micro-simulation model in order to model the integrated systems and optimize the PRT topology and network performance.

Michel Parent, Team Manager, INRIA, said that cyber cars are fully-automated individual road vehicles that are part of an optimized transportation system but are not necessarily separated from other traffic. He described a cyber-car demonstration that will run for 6 months (January to June, 2011) with three vehicles in La Rochelle, France.

Tony Kerr, Director, Ove Arup & Partners Ltd., reported that they are now under contract and beginning work on the San José PRT project. The initial portion of the project will include investigating a PRT system connecting the airport to light- and commuter-rail stations.

Magnus Hunhammer, CEO, Institute for Sustainable Transportation described how they have used a full- scale portable PRT station to publicize and educate people about PRT. He also showed a PRT visualization.

John Hammersley with ULTra PRT discussed planning efforts and competition for a PRT system in the historic city of Bath. He said the competition led to overwhelmingly positive response and the PRT system could pay for operating costs and provide a return on investment of 7.3% based on a very reasonable fare.

Henk van Zuylen of The University of Technology, Delft described a PRT system connecting the Airport of Rotterdam and The Hague with existing rail and Scienceport Holland. The 21 km system would have 14 stations and 70 vehicles. Capital costs were estimated at €109M and annual O&M costs at €1.7M. He said the real barriers are institutional and political.

Sonal Ahuja, Director International Development, Capita Symonds Ltd., said there are 17 to 18 PRT projects currently being taken seriously in India where there is no recession and people pay for purchases in cash. He described a PRT study in New Delhi where they had to resort to double guideways to accommodate projected demand using 3 second headways and an occupancy factor of 3.0. The study showed a benefit/cost ratio of 4 and an internal rate of return of 18%.

Martin Lowson, President, ULTRa PRT discussed the design of a high capacity PRT station. He said they have found loading and unloading times to be quite consistent with that on other modes. Door cycle times tend to dominate station dwell times. Station designs can minimize the number of bays required by keeping standby vehicles close by in order to immediately replace departing vehicles.

Arturo Dávila, Project Engineer, IADIADA Automotive Technology SA, described a vehicle platooning system called SAfe Road TRains for the Environment (SARTRE) where the lead vehicle is driven and following ones are driverless. The intent is to increase safety and capacity while reducing energy used.

Ingmar Andréasson, Professor, KTH, discussed the ridership effects of PRT mixed with scheduled transit. He found that conventional transit is inadequate and PRT can increase total transit share and induce more travelling. In order to estimate the new transit share including PRT, all we need to know is the transit disutility and how much it is going to change, if the other modes are going to remain unchanged. He found the bus penalty relative to car to be € 2.50 and the PRT penalty to be half that, when the entire trip is by PRT.

We often come across situations in the U.S. where managers are strongly motivated to avoid all risk (even small risks associated with potentially large benefits) and situations overseas where managers want to evaluate the risks and rewards. We believe the problem in the U.S. lies not so much with the individual managers as with societal expectations, the structure of their job and the way they are rewarded. The manager of a transportation authority must keep those buses and trains running despite increasing fuel costs and decreasing fares and subsidies. He/she is rewarded for implementing a glistening new light rail system and no one cares (or knows) if most of the passengers come from the reduced bus system. Were the light rail system to have a hiccup (delayed opening or budget overrun), the manager’s head may have to roll. No wonder the manager has no time, budget or inclination to look at an innovative system that has few successful operating examples he/she can kick the tires on.

Fortunately for personal rapid transit (PRT or Podcars), there are niche applications where small systems can be effective, such as airports, universities and other campus-like situations. PRT can (and is) make its debut and prove itself in these small applications. Transit managers will then see that it works and be emboldened to apply it in broader situations. Or will they? After a disastrous beginning, the Morgantown PRT system has been running very successfully (substantially beating conventional guideway transit by many measures) for over thirty years (the New York Times characterized it as “A White Elephant Turned Into a Transit Workhorse”) yet few transit managers seem interested in whether its success can be repeated without repeating its teething problems.

Without successful niche applications, PRT in the U.S. would be doomed until overseas applications have been operating successfully for twenty or more years. With successful niche applications, we may be able to stay close on the heels (say ten years behind) of our foreign friends.

How can a society be so risk averse and yet simultaneously accept extreme danger every day in their cars (we kill about as many Americans on the roads each year as were killed in the entire Vietnam War)? If we cannot learn to balance risk and reward, how are we going to ever regain the lead in transportation or any other field where we have lost it?

Judging by the rapt attention (at times you could hear a pin drop) and the lively discussions during the breaks, the Modern Mobility Conference, held near Kansas City on April 23^rd, 2010, was a resounding success. The conference was moderated by Stan Young, President of the Advanced Transit Association (ATRA) and marked the culmination of a project investigating the feasibility of a PRT system at the Village West development east of Kansas City.

Mokhtee Ahmad, Regional Administrator, FTA Region 7 welcomed the attendees. While expressing caution about the willingness of FTA to embrace PRT, he privately stated that PRT projects are eligible for FTA New Starts funding.

 ATRA board member and events coordinator, Larry Fabian, introduced the topic of automated people movers (APM). He stated that there are 146 worldwide of which 4 are PRT. APMs have historically been noted for their high costs. While PRT systems may require more sophisticated control systems, they will hopefully also reduce costs.

Peter Muller, president of PRT Consulting rounded out the first session with an introduction to PRT planning. He began by outlining how cars are ruining our cities by contributing to congestion, killing over 40,000 per year, contributing a third of all greenhouse gases, using more oil than all other uses combined and devouring property (at Village West four times as much land is devoted to roads and parking as to buildings). Conventional transit is no solution since transit’s mode share has barely changed in the last 20 years. He then outlined how PRT’s characteristics may allow it to address many of these problems.

Mr. Muller went on to educate the attendees in the technical aspects of PRT and how it should be planned for. He stressed that public participation can be key in dealing with potential nay-sayers early in a project. He outlined a public outreach process that has shown that people generally prefer small, private modes of transport such as cars, bicycles and PRT over rail-based modes and that the least-preferred modes are bus-based.

 The second session was focused on reporting on the results of the Village West PRT Project. Dr. Moni Al Aasar reported on BG Consultant’s analysis of structural and code compliance issues. He stated that the Kansas DOT had concerns about the ULTra guideway design as used at Cardiff and Heathrow. These concerns related to the fracture-critical, non-redundant nature of the design and the fact that it has out-of-plane loading. BG Consultants developed an alternative pre-cast concrete guideway design and Dr. El-Aasar presented estimated guideway costs based on this design. He also presented estimated costs for stations as shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Probable Construction Costs

 Dr. Steven Schrock, Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas, reported on the environmental aspects of the Village West PRT Project. No major environmental concerns are anticipated but NEPA requirements will have to be met if federal funding is involved. He discussed the methodology used to estimate the value of benefits deriving from reductions in automobile operating costs, onsite emissions and accident costs.

 Peter Muller reported on the work done to estimate ridership, system requirements, overall benefits and costs. In addition, he reported that Patti Banks Associates found that quite significant land redevelopment options become available through retrofitting the area with a PRT system. They also found that even more significant opportunities would have been available had the development incorporated PRT from the beginning.

 Mr. Muller stated that the benefits (including societal non-monetize-able benefits) outweighed the costs by some two-and-a-half times. Increased tax revenues plus a per-ride charge of about $0.50 would be sufficient to pay for capital costs in ten years. Ongoing operating costs would thereafter require a fare of approximately $1.00 per trip. He presented a comparison (shown in Table 2) comparing the viability of this project with another PRT project, a light rail project and a commuter rail project.

In summary, the PRT system seems viable and financially feasible. However, the study, which was undertaken as an academic exercise, had insufficient budget with which to adequately investigate important factors such as ridership, increased tax revenues and financing mechanisms.

Table 2. Cost Comparisons

Perhaps the most interesting part of the conference was the closing panel discussion moderated by retired Professor Alan Black. Tom Jacobs with the Mid-America Regional Council (MARC) said that transit is the number one solution they are working on. He was very impressed with the attributes and benefits of the PRT system and thought it was really compelling from an environmental standpoint. He considers the 60 to 200 square miles of parking lots within the MARC area to be environmentally damaging due to heat island effects, ozone emissions and increased storm water runoff. He saw promise in PRT’s ability to create vital spaces.

Douglas Bach, The Unified Government of Wyandotte County’s Deputy County Administrator, said that existing remote parking could be used if a PRT system was in place and that there are more and more reasons to park the car and travel around the facility. He felt that the system itself could be an attraction, but implementing it would be challenging. STAR bonds may be difficult to use because of restrictions. However, the recently enabled Community Improvement District has more flexibility on both the taxing and spending sides.

Dick Jarrold with the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority discussed how PRT could help solve the last mile problem experienced by larger systems. However, he expressed concerns regarding the need to verify costs, aesthetics, ridership, security, safety and impact on/of underground utilities. He said that, if the numbers are correct, Village West would be the type of facility at which to implement PRT. The big question is, “who bears the risk if it does not pan out?”

 Dick McReynolds, retired KDOT researcher encouraged the group not to get too hung up on specific costs or issues. This project was funded at about one tenth the usual costs and the results are quite encouraging.

Chris Ozimek, Director of Marketing for Schlitterbahn, explained that while a small portion opened last year, the 270 acre resort will take another four to five years to complete. It includes over four miles of waterways [which the PRT system would connect to]. The resort is designed to have people park and leave their cars for the duration of their stay. PRT could take this to a whole new level and increase the average length of stay.