Posts Tagged ‘Transit’

« Older Entries

Third Personal Rapid Transit Test Track Commences Operation

Sunday, January 29th, 2012

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

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

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

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

System characteristics

 

Elevated track. Note superelevation.

Elevated track. Note superelevation.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in General | No Comments »

World’s First and Largest Urban PRT System Announced

Tuesday, December 13th, 2011

 We are posting ULTra Global’s recent press release here due to its significance. This is not an endorsement of ULTra over any other PRT system, only a recognition of the significance of this milestone for PRT in general.

The Punjab Government has awarded a contract for the world’s first urban Passenger Rapid Transport (PRT) system in Amritsar, India to Ultra Fairwood.  

At peak capacity the PRT system can carry up to 100,000 passengers a day on a 3.3km elevated guideway in over 200 specialist vehicles between seven stations, making it the world’s largest PRT system to date. 

Elevated Guideways

Elevated Guideways

Financed entirely by private funding on a build, own, operate transfer (BOOT) basis, the passenger services will go live in 2014. 

Although the cost of the scheme is subject to commercial confidentiality, it demonstrates that a large scale urban PRT system can be delivered on a financially viable, fare-based model and offer very real returns for financial backers.

The Ultra PRT system uses driverless, electric-battery powered, computer driven, zero emission vehicles called “pods” which :

  • can each carry 4-6 people in privacy and comfort
  • provide an on-demand, non-stop journey to anywhere on the system
  • use one third of the energy of a car,  and are virtually silent with no emissions
  • travel on a segregated guideway that can run over/alongside roads, rail tracks and buildings
  • never get held up by congestion, so reduce travel time
Bi-level Station

Bi-level Station

Amritsar is home to the holiest shrine of Sikhs, the Golden Temple, and is rich in historical, religious and heritage sites.  As such it’s a big draw for large numbers of visitors, especially during festivals and religious events, as pilgrims flock to the area.  Up to 500,000 people visit the Golden Temple on important religious festival days.  The PRT system will ease congestion and reduce the current long travel transit times.

The route will focus on taking passengers from the railway and bus stations to the Golden Temple and will:

  • take  35% of daily visitors to the Golden Temple
  • save up to 30 minutes on the current journey times
  • attract passengers from a wide geographic and demographic profile, from regular commuters to “one off day trip” users.
  • run from 04.00 – 24.00 seven days a week
  • charge fares competitive with alternative modes such as taxis and autorickshaws. 

 “The Punjab Government and city of Amritsar are leading the world in the application of a PRT system to provide volume transport in a major city environment.  As a result Ultra Fairwood is also in discussions with the authorities in other major Asian cities which suffer from major transportation infrastructure issues – congestion, space constraints, pollution problems, capacity restrictions and passenger service issues. The Ultra PRT system can help to solve these issues. 

“In one city by installing a PRT system we could potentially reduce a current journey of up to one hour in peak hours to around  seven minutes, in another country we may be able to reduce the number of cars on a major city’s streets by up to 20%.  People are at last starting to understand how this innovative technology can play a role in city transport solutions” said Ultra Fairwood’s CFO and Deputy CEO Alan Moore.

A sentiment echoed by Fraser Brown, MD of Ultra Global PRT, “The pod PRT system is an idea whose time has well and truly come.  Using British technology and know how, we’ve proved it works at Heathrow and now with Fairwood we’re creating bigger systems, on larger  routes, with more stations and pods. 

“We’ll be carrying 35% of the visitors in the area and removing 2.2m car trips in Amritsar per annum. It’s the future of environmental green travel. 

“Research has shown that by 2020, there could be between 50 to over 600 PRT system installations world wide. A real achievement for a system that came out of research from Bristol University.”

“Ultra Global sees the confidence that the Punjab Government have shown in PRT as further evidence of the growing sentiment amongst architects, transport planners and governments that PRT systems can sustainably and quickly transform an urban transport environment and provide users and other stakeholders with another viable transport mode in which to manage their cities and campuses.” Brown adds.

Ultra Fairwood is a collaboration between Ultra and Fairwood created in 2010 bringing the revolutionary Ultra technology to Asia.   Ultra Fairwood conceives, designs, finances, constructs and operates complete PRT solutions, typically on a BOOT basis.  The company is working on PRT projects for cities, campus environments and airports.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Transit | No Comments »

Personal Rapid Transit a Hot Topic at Meeting Between USDOT and Swedish Counterparts

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Conferences | No Comments »

Personal Rapid Transit Influence on Mode Shift to Transit

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011

Recent work by Joerg Schweizer  finds a significant mode shift to public transit when the level of service is similar to that of personal rapid  transit (PRT). Professor Schweizer conducted stated-preference public surveys in European cities that make no mention of PRT but ask people to choose the transit characteristics that would make them switch from private to public modes. When offered a nearby station, a clean and air-conditioned vehicle, short waiting times, no transfers and a guaranteed seat, (a combination only feasible with personal rapid transit) transit mode share increased dramatically – often by more than double. Note that the surveys assume a widespread system with fares equivalent to present public transit fares. Professor Schweizer also quotes research by Tegner with similar results.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Transit | No Comments »

Some Thoughts on Group Rapid Transit

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

The Morgantown PRT system which has been operating in Morgantown West Virginia since 1975 is actually a group rapid transit system (GRT). GRT systems have larger vehicles and passengers are typically required to share rides with others going to the same destination(s). These vehicles also typically accommodate standees thereby fitting more passengers into a smaller space. As accustomed as we are to large trains and buses, many believe that larger GRT vehicles make more sense than smaller personal rapid transit (PRT) vehicles. But do they?

Morgantown PRT

Morgantown PRT

The answer is not simple. It depends on many factors. Larger vehicles require larger stations and more substantial guideways. Thus, the capital costs can be higher. The operating savings resulting from carrying more passengers in fewer vehicles can be offset by the additional cost of running larger empty vehicles during off-peak periods.

Because of the standees, GRT vehicles cannot accelerate or decelerate as quickly as PRT vehicles can. This requires greater separation (headway, or time between vehicles) in order to meet the same safety criteria. This in turn means that GRT’s capacity gains are less than would be expected by just comparing vehicle capacities.

2getthere GRT

2getthere GRT

GRT cannot match the high level of service of PRT where everyone gets a seat, nobody waits for more than about a minute and trips are nonstop. With GRT, seats are in relatively short supply. Passengers have to wait (typically up to about five minutes) for other passengers to fill the vehicle. In addition each vehicle may make a number of stops along the way.

The requirement for GRT vehicles to wait for passengers to arrive who all share the same destination(s) means that GRT does not function very well when there are numerous stations in a system. Either the wait times get quite long or most vehicles are nowhere near full.

Nonetheless, GRT can carry more passengers per hour along a guideway. Increased guideway capacity can be a useful attribute for a networked PRT system where there is intense demand between a few station pairs, but the majority of the demand can be handled by PRT vehicles. In this scenario, GRT service between the busy station pairs can be integrated with PRT service elsewhere. If the GRT vehicles can run on the PRT track, it could be feasible to intermingle the vehicles, changing the fleet mix to meet demand fluctuations. Vectus is developing a GRT vehicle that will run on their PRT track. Another solution that could achieve a similar result could be to platoon PRT vehicles together (either physically or electronically). Forming and breaking the platoons in stations could eliminate safety issues associated with doing so on the fly.

Personal rapid transit systems may be well advised to develop ride sharing/platooning/GRT options to meet the capacity demands that are bound to arise as applications become larger and more diverse. Some may bemoan the need to sacrifice some of the “personal” aspects but, in many countries, the demand for mass transportation will predominate. The distinction between PRT and GRT may become blurred.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Transit | 2 Comments »

Personal Rapid Transit Capacity

Sunday, January 9th, 2011

The burgeoning interest in personal rapid transit (PRT) in India is highlighting the issue of PRT capacity. This is a fairly complex topic that will be dealt with fairly briefly here. Note: network capacity is much more complex than just the guideway capacity that is dealt with here. PRT capacity is complex because it is impacted by a number of issues:

Brick wall stopping (BWS) criteria. This is a railroad safety criterion that many believe not to be applicable to PRT. Basically BWS requires that a train must be able to stop before hitting a preceding train if that preceding train instantaneously turns into a stationary brick wall. In order to meet BWS the time between trains (or T-Pods in the case of PRT) must be adjusted based on speed and the maximum available, or allowable, deceleration.

Deceleration. The maximum deceleration is a function of the available friction and of whether passengers are standing or sitting, wearing seat belts, etc. The available friction or deceleration force varies with the type of PRT system. PRT systems driven and decelerated by linear induction motors rely on their motors for their primary breaking force and are typically independent of friction and thus weather. The maximum breaking deceleration they apply is typically less than what is available. Rubber-tired PRT systems, on the other hand, are dependent on the friction between their tires and the riding surface which can be dramatically impacted by weather. These systems will usually have weather mitigation plans aimed at maintaining friction above about 0.25G where G is the force of gravity.

Minimum headway. This is the minimum time between vehicles measured from the front of one vehicle to the front of the other. For BWS criteria, it varies from about 1.4 seconds with 0.50G deceleration force at 15 mph to about 3.2 seconds with 0.25G deceleration force at 30 mph. Without BWS criteria many suppliers claim they will achieve minimum headways of 0.5 seconds. Cabintaxi demonstrated 0.5 second PRT headways but never proved endurance or safety at these headways. We therefore believe it prudent to plan for minimum headways of no less than 1.0 seconds. Headway is strongly tied to capacity since reducing headway by half theoretically doubles capacity.

Occupancy. This is the number of passengers per T-pod. Occupancy is also strongly tied to capacity since doubling the occupancy theoretically doubles capacity. However increasing PRT occupancy during peak hours usually involves ride sharing. This can be easily accomplished on small systems with few stations but is difficult to accomplish on large systems with many stations. Imagine how long a passenger bound to station 57 in a 100 station system would have to wait for another to arrive also bound for station 57. Ride sharing protocols to overcome this problem will be the subject of a future article.

The table below provides the theoretical guideway capacity in passengers per hour based on variations in the parameters discussed above. The reasonable capacity of PRT guideways is seen to range between about 1,000 and 14,000 passengers per hour. Since PRT systems tend to cost much less than other fixed guideway systems, it is usually useful to compare the costs required to meet the capacity demand.

Capacity2

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in General | 1 Comment »

Masdar Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) Opens

Thursday, December 9th, 2010

On Sunday, November 28th, 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

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General | No Comments »

Why Has Masdar Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) Been Scaled Back?

Saturday, October 16th, 2010

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.

Rubber-tired, battery-operated PRT vehicle, manufactured by 2getthere, being tested in the undercroft below the podium (pedestrain) level at the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology.

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in General | No Comments »

PRT @LHR 2010 – Summary of Personal Rapid Transit Conference at Heathrow Airport – Days Two and Three

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

Wednesday – Thursday 22nd – 23rd 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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Conferences | No Comments »

PRT @LHR 2010 – Summary of Personal Rapid Transit Conference at Heathrow Airport – Day One

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Tuesday 21st 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.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Conferences | No Comments »

« Older Entries