Interest in personal rapid transit (PRT) is growing rapidly, and a wide variety of entities are now looking at purchasing, supporting and/or facilitating PRT applications of vastly differing sizes and complexities. Many of these entities are relatively new to the concept of PRT and, although enamored by it, may lack the skills to adequately protect themselves and/or their communities from the risks that may be involved. PRT is very easy for the user to understand, but it incorporates a number of technical aspects not easy for the owner to understand. Even those well versed in conventional transit will usually require many years of study and involvement before they comprehend all of the nuances associated with PRT.

There are now a number of PRT suppliers with paying clients and commercially available systems. Other entrepreneurs are developing new systems – each with the stated potential to provide even better service for less cost. Few system developers have the capital to both develop and commercialize their systems independently, and many are seeking projects suitable to allow the development process to be folded into a commercial application. This type of arrangement can bring benefits to all parties, but the risks must be thoroughly understood.

While the developer may (or may not) understand all of the risks involved, it is unlikely that the party, to be the beneficiary of the ultimate application, has the technical expertise to truly understand what they are getting into and how to mitigate their risks. In addition, the beneficiary needs the tools necessary to fully understand the different options that are available, in order to receive a PRT application that meets its needs. If one company is offering what seems like an unbeatable deal, there will often be others available with different offers that may or may not better meet the beneficiary’s needs and, therefore, may warrant consideration.

We have added a new section to our website to provide an overview of the activities involved in a typical PRT project. However, not all of these activities are necessarily required for each project. This section is not intended to be exhaustive, just to outline the types of things that need to be done to help ensure successful PRT projects.

People generally prefer rail to bus service. Rail usually provides a smoother, faster and more reliable ride. However, the faster service comes at the expense of fewer stations. Feeding a train system with buses does not work well because people don’t like to use two services that can both involve long, unpredictable wait times.

This dilemma can be solved by integrating a personal rapid transit (PRT) collector/distributor system into the rail system. People can be expected to view the combined systems almost as one, since the PRT system involves almost no waiting (typically less than one minute). The cost savings of the rail stations that can be eliminated could go a long way to paying for the PRT system while allowing the trains to run faster, The combined systems will provide a much higher level of service with wider coverage, thereby enticing a higher ridership. A bonus would be the increase in land values of the wider area within walking distance of the combined systems.

The Swedes are ahead of us on this concept and are seriously investigating PRT last-mile service between commuter rail and downtown business districts. The UAE has started construction of an auto-free city (Masdar) dependent on PRT for internal transportation. The British have a PRT system about to go into public service at Heathrow Airport. We Americans need to start catching up!

There were 15 papers focused on personal rapid transit (PRT) at the 12^th International Conference on Automated People Movers held in Atlanta May 31 – June 3, 2009. The proceedings are bound in a 600-page book that can be obtained from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

 In her paper titled Sustainability, PRT and Parking, Shannon Sanders McDonald presented options for parking garages linked to PRT to provide fully sustainable approaches to integrating transit into the urban fabric.

I presented a paper on station options for open-guideway PRT systems. http://www.prtconsulting.com/docs/PRTStationsMullerAPM09.pdf These types of systems are typically more flexible than captive-bogey or suspended systems and a variety of ways of incorporating stations into existing or new developments were illustrated and explained. I presented a suggestion (not included in my paper) to consider grade-separated overpasses in place of merge/diverge figure-of-eight guideway layouts for reasons of capacity, time, capital and operational costs savings. This paper shared a $500 Best Paper award with Shannon’s.

Building station

Urban Elevated Guideway Station

 Robbert Lohman presented a paper based on the PRT system being deployed in the zero-carbon, zero-emission City of Masdar in the UAE. It answered such questions as “How would you build a city if you could start from scratch? With sustainability in the back of your mind, would you still allow access to cars? If not, how would you accommodate mobility of people and goods? Would you be able to with today’s technology?” He concluded that the advantages of including PRT in the transportation mix include energy savings, environmental friendliness and the huge reduction in space required for transit systems – allowing the space to be used for other purposes. The initial PRT system is scheduled for passenger service later this year.

2getthere T-Pod for Masdar City

Jörgen Gustafsson discussed the Vectus PRT concept and test track experience. The Vectus test program in Sweden has included two full winter seasons and has proven the system’s capability to cope with various snow and ice conditions. They have successfully proven the control concept using distributed asynchronous control based on a dynamic moving –block vehicle protection system along with receiving safety approval for all other aspects of the PRT system at a 3-second headway and speeds of 45 km/h.

Vectus Snowslinger

Göran Tegnér presented a paper summarizing a Swedish research project examining how a doubled transit ridership by podcars could be financed. He showed that it would be possible to double the transit ridership in cities with bus or LRT traffic when shifting to podcars. The cost per trip was shown to be lower by podcar than LRT and – in some cases – than bus.

David Holdcroft presented a very well attended paper updating the progress on the Heathrow PRT system. This system is now up and running under test. It has about 2 miles of guideway, three stations and 18 T-Pods. Passenger service will be phased in starting with BAA employees, then adding business car park users and finally the general public. Full public service is anticipated to be in place late this year.

ULTra T-Pod at Heathrow Airport

 Stan Young presented a paper (which I co-authored) about a case study we are undertaking at Village West Development in Kansas City, Kansas. The study found that the Kansas DOT did not approve of the ULTra guideway structural design but an acceptable precast concrete alternative was developed that had similar costs. Potential funding mechanisms for a PRT system do exist in the area but the viability of a PRT retrofit has yet to be explored. It does appear that numerous benefits would have derived had the PRT system been incorporated into the design from the beginning.

Proposed PRT Layout

My paper, Personal Rapid Transit’s Impact on Army Base Sustainability http://www.prtconsulting.com/docs/PRTArmyBaseSustainabilityFinal21909.pdf was based on a study we did for the U.S. Army Post at Fort Carson, Colorado Springs. The results were remarkably positive considering the sprawling layout of the Post. We found a benefit/cost ratio of 2.75 and that a fare of under $2.00 per ride would cover both operating costs and annualized capital costs. The following table compares our findings with those of two recently-announced conventional transit projects.

Steve Raney presented concepts for a PRT Circulator for Pleasanton and Perimeter Center. Both locations are edge cities associated with larger cities. In both cases PRT could increase transit ridership and reduce single occupant vehicle use. PRT provides a good last-mile solution and also helps prevent employees who don’t use cars for their commute from being stuck at their desks in the lunch hour. After the conference, Steve and I presented these concepts to Perimeter Center stakeholders where they were very well received.

Tony Kerr discussed lessons learned on the Heathrow PRT Guideway. The paper is very useful because it addresses elevated as well as at-grade guideways and covers a range of issues such as modular design, guardrail requirements and tolerances required for ride comfort. He indicated that PRT guideways require tighter tolerances than usual in civil engineering works and that provisions for fine adjustments to the running surface should be made.

J. Edward Anderson presented a paper titled “How to Design a PRT Guideway”. He argued that in most cases, the design of the guideway has been more or less an afterthought. The purpose of his paper was to stress the importance of adequate consideration of guideway design requirements and criteria. He listed 33 PRT guideway design requirements, discussed issues and tradeoffs and presented 19 PRT guideway design criteria before drawing detailed conclusions.

Ray MacDonald argued for high capacity PRT standardization. He was concerned that the technology is becoming divided into low capacity PRT following APM criteria (e.g. brick wall stopping requirements) and high capacity PRT rejecting these requirements. He considered low capacity PRT to not be financially feasible and urged standardization around high capacity PRT, even if used initially for low capacity applications.

John Lees-Miller presented a well-illustrated discussion of the potential for ride sharing in PRT. He stated that, in order to promote ride sharing it is very important to generate an environment that encourages it. He also showed that ride sharing becomes less effective as the number of potential destinations increases.

Wait Time vs. No. of Destinations

Ingmar Andreasson presented a paper titled “Extending PRT Capabilities” in which he examined various ways of increasing PRT capacity without reducing headway. He discussed three different ways of increasing capacity – ride-sharing, platooning of empties (since there is no safety reason not to run empties at very short headways) and pair-coupling (trains of two occupied vehicles). His results are tabulated below:

He suggested that combining all three features could increase capacity by a factor of 3 above the basic 1,200 passengers per hour per direction for a system with a 3-second headway.

Finally Jun-Ho Lee presented a paper on PRT computer simulation. He proposed an apparatus making it possible to directly evaluate vehicle operation characteristics on the guideway using real hardware. This could reduce the time for the development, implementation and evaluation of the operational control algorithm for PRT.

The success of the conference PRT@LHR (April 21 – 23, 2009) was amplified by fascinating tours of the ULTra PRT system at London’s Heathrow Airport (LHR). The dynamic three-day conference drew over a hundred people comprising approximately 24% owners/potential owners, 50% consultants and 20% PRT suppliers with a large portion of the remainder being made up of academics. Session attendance was slightly depleted by small groups leaving for frequent tours of the PRT system. Presentation topics were varied and interesting, making it a challenge to decide when to schedule a PRT tour. The only negative comments heard about the conference related to the hardness of the seating, while the only negative comments heard about the PRT system related to the ugly guideway fencing. The fencing was constructed for worker safety during erection and, it is hoped, will be replaced by more elegant safety railing.

T-Pod emerging from station

Vectus and 2getthere impressed the audience with their system advancements – Vectus with an impressive video of their winter weather capabilities and 2getthere announcing that they intend to commence carrying the public at their Masdar, UAE, installation later this year. The Masdar system is expected to ultimately have about a hundred stations and thousands of T-Pods.

The second day was focused on PRT plans in Holland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Italy and the United States. Nick Ford explained that a recent Frost & Sullivan study estimates €30b will have been spent on PRT worldwide by 2020. Gőran Tégner, of WSP, said that Swedish studies show total transit mode share rising 15 percentage points on average when PRT is introduced. Nathan Koren of ATS, Ltd., said that land value uplift can dwarf PRT capital costs. The author indicated their studies of PRT for a US Army Post found capital costs per passenger to be 11% and 22% respectively of those of recent rail and light rail projects.

The final day of the conference was focused on the CityMobil program. Michel Parent of INRIA stated that it is not possible to mix manual and automated cars at high speeds. He said that automated platooning at 0.3 second headways has been demonstrated at any speeds.

While attendees were not given rides on the PRT system, the author was privileged to ride it after the conference. Videos taken during the ride and during the conference tour may be viewed at