Pod People Wage War on Light Rail, Other Reality-Based Transpo Projects
Writer, cartoonist, cyclist and transit advocate Ken Avidor points us to this video, which he used in a recent Daily Kos diary entry. Writes Ken:
The Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) Pod People are always challenging me to prove that PRT promoters are anti-Light Rail Transit (LRT). Here is a video by one of these libertarian, "free-market" guys claiming LRT is old and expensive and PRT is more modern and won’t cost the taxpayers a dime. The fact is PRT is a Nixon-era concept and there is no evidence to prove it can pay for itself.
PRT, Avidor says on his "PRT Is a Joke" website, is often used as a "stalking horse" to undermine the funding and build-out of real-world mass transit projects. Its supporters include Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who, among other transgressions, opposes the expansion of that state’s Northstar commuter rail line.
Judging from the above video, trashing new light rail service in Phoenix, the thrust of the pro-PRT argument goes something like this:
Dude! It goes like a hundred miles an hour! You wouldn’t have to read books or sit beside weird people — AND you could listen to AC/DC!
On your iPod, of course.
“Carsharing is a business model, not an innovative tech. People knew what cars and sharing were going in. Some may have decried it, but making the experiment was going to be a quick reveal as to whether it worked, because of the preexisting infrastructure and predictable outlay for financing. That is to say, the Segway really is more comparable than carsharing to PRT, as it was a tech gamble.”
I think you’re making distinctions that are artificial. You’re falling back on the “technologically impossible” angle, which is clearly silly (as I’ve shown), so what’s really left are economics and usability/acceptability. And I can tell you for a fact that neither one of those was a priori settled matters when it came to carsharing, especially in the US. Your notion of “predictable outlay for financing” doesn’t begin to cover the financial complexities of that business, nor the operational challenges. Plus, advances in telematics (which weren’t very well-developed, cheap, functional, or solid state 10+ years ago) have been enormously helpful in making carsharing work.
Plus, “sharing” may be understood (in both the positive and negative connotations), but that term is actually misleading, as people are no more “sharing” in a deliberate manner than you or I “share” a seat at a coffee shop by sitting in it at different times of the day.
The basic point which eludes you is that there were very loud, uninformed, fear-ridden cranks fighting carsharing tooth-and-nail back in the day, and some of the fiercest ones (in fact most of the fiercest ones) were left-wingers. Their chicken little routines look pathetic in hindsight, seeing how well carsharing has done.
Heck, some of the biggest monkey-wrenchers of traditional mass transit are left-wingers, as I mentioned upthread. Everyone’s got their own little uber-important pet agenda, and if someone doesn’t adhere strictly to that agenda being the end-all-be-all, then watch out. I can’t tell you how many “town hall meetings” etc I’ve been to that are the epitome of these “here’s my grind” scenes, one grinder after another. No wonder progress takes so darn long, what with the old liberal circular firing squad hard at work.
I mean, I half believe that people like Bachmann are smart enough to know that if they associated themselves with something, some lunatic reactionary from the left would instantly rebel against that thing — and sure enough, that’s what happened.
Maybe if people would stick to thinking about an idea instead of who supports it and who doesn’t, then things might improve more often and at a quicker pace.
The basic point which eludes you is that there were very loud, uninformed, fear-ridden cranks fighting carsharing tooth-and-nail back in the day, and some of the fiercest ones (in fact most of the fiercest ones) were left-wingers. Their chicken little routines look pathetic in hindsight, seeing how well carsharing has done.
Would love to read some these anti-car-sharing left-wing chicken little crankers. They may have gone into shameful hiding, but no liberal crank can hide from Google Groups 20 year Usenet archives—smoke em out! Heck.
One of the talking points often stated by PRT promoters like Michele Bachmann and Dean Zimmermann is that “PRT pays for itself” whereas conventional transit requires subsidies.
How does PRT “pay for itself”?
“How does PRT pay for itself?”
Passengers pay fares. The fares are used to pay off operational costs, with excess going to pay down the construction debt.
Pessimistic projections have fares covering 100% operating costs but no capital costs. Optimistic projections have fares covering BOTH operating and capital costs. Even the pessimistic projection is better than any transit system does today – they require subsidy just to operate and don’t even touch their construction debt.
I believe most PRT systems estimate operating costs of around $1 per ride, so $2-fare PRT could mostly pay for itself (including some or all of construction costs), and $3 -fare could even turn a net profit.
These numbers were not pulled out of the air. They are based on extensive study by transit consultants who considered everything from vehicle maintenance to light bulbs in the stations. The Daventry study was one such study.
One benefit of PRT is that almost all operational cost is tied directly to passenger service. The vehicles are automated and run on demand, so no energy or driver cost is consumed unless paying passengers are riding. The same goes for maintenance of vehicles – less passenger traffic means less vehicle movement, thereby less frequent maintenance.
PRT does have some system-wide fixed costs, like staffing in the control facility, but as the system grows and overall revenue increases, those fixed costs remain the same and therefore become less significant.
Contrast this to buses and rails: They have driver and energy costs that are not directly related to passenger demand. If 1000 fares are collected on Monday but only 100 on Tuesday, Tuesday will incur larger losses than Monday because the train/bus must still make all the scheduled stops. This is why small cities with low transit usage have huge per-passenger subsidies, because operating costs are fixed even though fare collection is low.
PRT, therefore, is largely immune to fluctuations in ridership, and can better predict what costs will be per passenger, regardless of how many passengers actually ride. So PRT can actually set the fare precisely to what is needed to break even.
The farebox will supply all the revenue for purchasing right-of-way, construction, operation and maintenance?
Presumably the maintenenance on the miles and miles of elevated guideway will be done by remote control as PRT guru J. Edward Anderson suggested:
Question: How do we deal with squirrels, birds, raccoons, etc.?
Answer: Small creatures could nest in the bottom corners of my covered guideway without bothering anything. But, the plan is to build a maintenance vehicle equipped with a light, a television camera, and a high-pressure hose. It will be operated from time to time late at night to inspect the guideway interior to remove debris.
Great… a shower of critters and crud for pedestrians who happen to be walking below.
The PRT guys just make stuff up.
I’m not sure why this proposal for another type of mass transit technology has provoked such a firestorm of passion and invective. It gets a little tiring to read these pissing contests about where a particular transit mode is touted as inherently superior to all others, whether it be high-speed rail, streetcars, or bicycling.
New York City provides a superb example of how a network of different transit modes, each tailored to address a particular set of problems–with rich interconnections, redundancies, and overlap–can synergize to eliminate automobile dependency and increase quality of life. For example, I might choose to bicycle to work one way (and enjoy the Hudson River Greenway), walk around the neighborhood of my office building to run errands, take the subway home or hop on Metro-North to visit a friend in Westchester.
Let’s reserve judgment on PRT until we see some real-world examples of it and can better assess what niche it might serve (if any) in a well-designed, richly interconnected mass transit network.
Re: #112, It’s fabulous somebody can bike 40 miles to work each day within 2 hours, but that is an aggressive pace (20 miles/hour) that even many dedicated bicycle commuters can’t sustain, and I wouldn’t necessarily use that as an example of bicycles being competitive with trains as a transit option.
“Let’s reserve judgment on PRT until we see some real-world examples “
Which one? Skytran? Jpods? Beamways? Skyloop? Taxi 2000? Pathfinder?
there’s lots of different PRT concepts… how many chances do the PRT guys get?
Take a look at the futuristic PRT pods of yesteryear… PRT is not new or “innovative”.
A lot of time and millions of $$$ have been wasted on PRT that should have been spent on reality-based transit.
Read about PRT’s sorry record of expensive failures.
Forget it guys, Streetsbloggers obviously love getting doored and run over and so they’re opposed to any kind of technology that will get cars off the streets. Go take your silly utopian car-free ideas somewhere else.
“Would love to read some these anti-car-sharing left-wing chicken little crankers. They may have gone into shameful hiding, but no liberal crank can hide from Google Groups 20 year Usenet archives—smoke em out! Heck.”
Believe it or not, most interaction in the “old days” was face-to-face. I’m talking about meetings, TMO events, etc. There was definitely interest, but the committed monkey-wrenchers came from the left, not the right.
For example, you’d come to the table and one guy would be the “co-op guy,” and to him carsharing was all about fulfilling his co-op utopia. Then another guy would come to the table and he’d be an old electric car guy, and he absolutely insisted that carsharing had to be all about making electric cars mainstream and the only vehicles that should be used should be electric. And so on.
Heck, there’s carsharing organizations RIGHT NOW still going with both those angles — trying to be the perfect co-op/social justice blah blah thing, and also the most perfect, cleanest, greenest cars in the whole wide world (solar-powered plug-in Priuses). The resident zealot knows exactly who I am talking about. And lo and behold, that particular organization has been treading water, on the public dole no less, for 5 or so years (and that doesn’t include their pre-launch period of several years), while pragmatic organizations like Flexcar, Zipcar, and Philly Carshare are wildly successful, growing, and making an actual, meaningful impact in the world.
That’s the distinction I’m talking about.
Heck, I could tell you about co-ops unable (and unwilling) to cooperate with one another, co-ops that are literally neighbors to one another, because the one co-op has their little version of how things have to be (and is a consumer co-op) and the other one has their very set version of how things have to be (and they’re a worker-owner co-op).
The right-wing is almost always going to try and put a stop to anything coming from the left, but that’s not nearly the problem as the liberal circular firing squad — which, incidentally, the obstructionist right-wing is happy to egg on.
So I find it highly ironic that when the right-wing gets on board with an idea with Greens, that somehow this is evidence of some evil conspiracy instead of a positive sign that common ground has been found.
“New York City provides a superb example of how a network of different transit modes, each tailored to address a particular set of problems–with rich interconnections, redundancies, and overlap–can synergize to eliminate automobile dependency and increase quality of life. For example, I might choose to bicycle to work one way (and enjoy the Hudson River Greenway), walk around the neighborhood of my office building to run errands, take the subway home or hop on Metro-North to visit a friend in Westchester.”
Sure, if you just ignore that the primary rail lines were set in place a very long time ago, long before cars were able to get a foothold in America, in a town that is centuries old. That included being able to establish rights-of-way when land was relatively cheap and labor even cheaper. Try to retrofit most any other modern American city in that fashion is a logistical and economic impossibility, particularly given the incessant opposition from the standard cast of characters who don’t want to see less cars and less oil consumption.
I am continually amused by the round-robin of the zealot. Hint: PRT does not necessarily need to be elevated. That’s not a core design principle, that’s a particular design choice that certain PRT firms have chosen.
One would think that someone whose whole life revolves around the topic would actually spend one or two minutes actually thinking before bleating like a mindless robot. But actually understanding something is a threat. Best to create strawmen and lay on the invective, like all lazy debaters try to do.
PRT IS A FRAUD!!! Just look at their website! They don’t have any detailed plans or specifications for their design or analyses of system parameters! It’s all wishy-washy mumbo-jumbo! It’s like they’ve put no thought into it whatsoever! It’s all just a fairy tale! All they have to back up their claims is physics, engineering design and experimental data! DOnT BEL1EVE TEH LIEZ!!!!!1!!
Urbanis @#157: Amen!
What really puzzles me is that the anti-PRT people are attacking Masdar City. Why the heck should they care if some oil billionaire dumps $20B into something half a world away? It’s a no-lose situation for us: if it works, we finally have a real-world demonstration; if it doesn’t work, we lose nothing and we’ve gained some knowledge of what not to do.
The opposition to Masdar proves that this is much more about ideology than practicality.
Nathan, I’m sure the “zealot” is aware that ATRA’s definition of PRT says the guideway can be “aboveground, at groundlevel or underground”.
But the problem with running the ULtra pods on the ground… I’ll quote the Daventry Town Council report on PRT:
“European legislation, having its basis in the Treaty of Rome, demands that the driver is at all times responsible for a vehicle that uses public roads. However sophisticated they become the present regulations are clear- the barrier to allowing unmanned automatic vehicles to use the public highway will always be- who is going to be held responsible in case of an incident? The uncertainty around this issue effectively bars automatic systems from using the public highway, restricting them to private land. It is abundantly clear that all Personal Rapid Transport systems using unmanned automatic vehicles will require a dedicated single-use track to operate within the law.
Furthermore, for safety reasons, such ground-level systems would require substantial 2m high fencing each side of the track, protecting not only the public from the PODs but also its occupants. Source – CityMobil and Automatic Transport Systems of Cardiff. ….
*snip*
“Plans of the proposed layout for Daventry available on the DDC website do not differentiate between ground level and elevated track but it is difficult to envisage much remaining at ground level once it enters the inner urban area without the whole system resembling a fairground rollercoaster.”
*snip*
“Due to legal restraints guide-ways at ground level will require to be enclosed within substantial uninterrupted fencing, making this configuration impracticable for most of the routing proposed for the inner areas of Daventry. High level guide-ways by their very presence would not only have a substantial impact on the character of the town, but also visually impact on individual households and neighbourhoods along the route. ”
*snip*
“Daventry people have not been apprised of the full extent of the infrastructure required to operate the proposed PRT system. This lack of information clearly denies them the opportunity to make reasoned judgement and comment. “
Perhaps Nate can explain why the PRT company would either be unable to give, or refuse to give information to the elected officials on the PRT Working Group.
Hm, now the poor dear can’t even read his own clips. No one said it needs to be surface, either. That’s another design option, not a core design principle.
What’s the problem with subsurface? Dirty Mole People going to nibble off our toes? I can’t wait to find out.
I mean seriously, it’s not like we currently have any small-capacity vehicles running at high speeds at ground level!!! Even europeans know that that’s totally unsafe! And no one in their right mind would send such vehicles right into the middle of a dense city!
“Sure, if you just ignore that the primary rail lines were set in place a very long time ago, long before cars were able to get a foothold in America, in a town that is centuries old. That included being able to establish rights-of-way when land was relatively cheap and labor even cheaper. Try to retrofit most any other modern American city in that fashion is a logistical and economic impossibility, particularly given the incessant opposition from the standard cast of characters who don’t want to see less cars and less oil consumption.”
I agree it would be nearly impossible to recreate what NYC has today all at once. They have the benefit of 100 years of transit development. Cities have tried to emulate what NYC has, but they fall FAR short because of the following combination of factors:
1) construction of rail lines is much more expensive than last century when NYC’s system was built, so by necessity, rail has to be built out slowly.
2) in order to provide the convenience that car-centric passengers demand, there needs to be sufficient transit density and frequency to provide convenient service. This implies that rail has to be built out quickly.
So costs force you to build rail slowly, but the lack of density during those initial phases makes it less useful to passengers AND more expensive to operate. Thus you have this nice, high capacity rail line that is vastly underutilized because it doesn’t go where most people need it to go. With that kind of performance, getting phase 2+ approved is politically impossible and you wind up with a single isolated, expensive, underperforming rail line.
The PRT solution trades off some of that high end capacity for better coverage, better service, and lower operating costs. A starter PRT network can cover more destinations than a rail line, and will provide a passenger experience that will ease the transition from the automobile. People can ride without worrying about routes, transfers, long waits, or being stranded because they missed the last train, all with a system that has operational costs which don’t break the bank.
Eventually, the transit market will build up, more people will leave their cars at home, and the network can be expanded incrementally. For high capacity corridors, buses can augment during the busiest times, carrying people from the dense areas out to remote PRT stations where they can complete their journey – a transfer, but no waiting. Eventually, with transit gaining market share, the passenger demand may justify an underground rail line in the busiest corridors. This may take anywhere from 20 years to 50 years, maybe longer, but at least it’s moving us forward to a transit-oriented society.
Is this so far-fetched? I think using PRT to transition car-lovers onto transit is much more promising than starting with rail, which provides lots of excess capacity that will never be used because car drivers won’t switch. Better to get them to switch with a lightweight, cost-effective system like PRT, then once the market grows, build the high capacity connectors.
Indeed. PRT is still a relatively low-velocity solution; it’s still an improvement over stop-and-go automobile traffic in dense areas and an improvement over local conventional transit in low-density areas, but it’s not really suited to longer-distance trips (at least the currently proposed systems aren’t). So PRT can be used to get people from their suburban dwellings to the nearest intercity train station or bus terminal without using their car, then they can take the intercity train or bus for longer trips at faster average speed. I personally would love to take transit to get from my ‘burb to Philly, but it would take me twice as long as it would driving because the local transit service is slow and it would involve a lot of transfers with long waiting times. If I had a rapid-transit way to get me straight to the Northeast Corridor to transfer to an intercity train, my total trip would only be about as long as with a car, and maybe even shorter. And if the price were right, I’d prefer to relax on a train/podcar rather than have to drive.
“Indeed. PRT is still a relatively low-velocity solution”
Sure, but as you noted, that’s more a function of existing design manifestations rather than a core design principle. It’s perfectly feasible that the core design principle could manifest in a high-speed-capable form. It just would likely entail semi-depressurized environments to deal with air resistance.
I know this probably feeds into the fear of the detractors, but I don’t see why it can’t replace every form of non-human-powered mobility, except perhaps for high-speed transoceanic travel… and even then, that might be possible, but not necessarily very economical or have sufficient redundancies to withstand and possible attacks or other disruptions.
PRTxorcist: “PRT IS A FRAUD!!! Just look at their website! They don’t have any detailed plans or specifications for their design or analyses of system parameters! It’s all wishy-washy mumbo-jumbo! It’s like they’ve put no thought into it whatsoever! It’s all just a fairy tale!
Avidor: It is a fairy tale… but some fairy tales can make people rich. Bernie Madoff and Tom Petters got rich telling people fairy tales they wanted to here.
A while back, some other guys had the idea that they could get rich selling a fairy tale that people wanted to hear. It was a tale of free “personal” transportation in the sky (by and by). The PRT guys thought they could make a lot of $$$ selling their fairy tale to investors.
Take a look at the PRT business plan at the bottom of this page. The money quote:
“the cities are lined up like ducks”
The zealot’s problem is that his identity is now firmly committed to his conspiracy theory.
I came up with PRT all on my own, as a consciously car-free person, before I ever even knew “PRT” concepts existed. So I guess my independent reasoning, based on experience and knowledge, makes me Bernie Madoff.
Someone should use the zealot as an example of how to make every logically fallacious argument in the book.
So, please tell us why it can’t go subsurface. I really want to know if the Mole People are going to eat me. After Michelle Bachmann and I feast together on the flesh of babies, of course.
“It is a fairy tale… but some fairy tales can make people rich. Bernie Madoff and Tom Petters got rich telling people fairy tales they wanted to here.”
I know, man! The only thing worse than these PRT fraudsters is those guys telling everybody that their gajillion dollar streetcars that go negative eleventy miles an hour are going to convince everyone to leave their cars at home and enjoy a lovely sixteen hour ride to the grocery store! I totally wish I’d thought of starting an LRT company, I’d have government cheese coming out of my ears by now and could buy a nice island in the carribean!
Here’s a little experiment for any zealots out there.
Go onto an actual Metro bus. You know, a real one that people actually need to use because they’re too poor, alcoholic, or mentally or physically disabled. No yuppie suburban express bus. A real bus that’s someone’s sole form of transportation by necessity, not choice.
Now start querying your fellow passengers. (You do talk to your fellow passengers on a real bus, right? It’s one big happy family party!)
Ask them the following:
If I gave you the money today to pay for your own decent car, gas, insurance, etc, and you were legally and physically capable of driving, would you continue to use public transit daily? Pay particular mind to ask the poor woman going to her job at Taco Bell with three kids in tow.
I cannot ever ride the bus without someone talking about how they would rather not be on the bus.
I mean, does someone seriously think any rational human being prefers going about 12 mph on average, after waiting at some god-forsaken bus stop on a busy road, then being let out in the middle of a drug dealing den in the middle of downtown St. Paul, only to have to wait in the freezing cold in the middle of February to catch another miserable, rattly, 12 mph bus to simply get up to WalMart on Univeristy with a total trip time of about 1 hour? When someone could just do the whole drive in about 12 minutes in a warm, comfortable vehicle of their own?
Oh, and that’s if that’s a weekday during the daytime. Saturdays and especially Sundays are entirely different matter.
And don’t trot out some silly “more buses” argument, because if you somehow think it’s economically feasible to give everyone point-to-point access with mass transit vehicles, even within a city, then you have sniffed far too much glue to recover.
PRTxorcist, rail transit exists in the meat world, PRT only exists in cyberspace.
Nate: In cities, there’s stuff underground… cables, pipes, tunnels, burial sites, water etc.
I know you weren’t serious…. show the PRT guys the facts and they get silly.
Seriously KA, no one in their right mind would run transit underground! That’s just preposterous! You’d have to be out of your mind to wish for something so fantastic. There’s no room for transit underground, there are too many tunnels!
And putting little cars on top of posts all over the city? What an insane utopian idea! Next thing you know they’ll be asking you to close of streets to all but bicycle and pedestrian traffic! What a bunch of dreamers! Get with the real world, people.
Why are cyclists so anti-social? Why do they insist on riding around on their own pivate vehicles? They should be cramming into heavy main-line vehicles that go slower than their bicycles instead!
I guess subways don’t exist because there’s sewer pipes in the ground.
Oh, wait. That’s on Bizarro World, not Earth.
I didn’t think the zealot had a reasonable objection, as always.
“Why are cyclists so anti-social? Why do they insist on riding around on their own pivate vehicles?”
Exactly.
Does a zealot never use an automobile? Cars R Coffins, right?
My personal guess is that a certain someone read a little too much Ivan Illich at an impressionable point in his life and now forgot exactly what Ivan was really talking about.
42nd St. LRT doesn’t exist, therefore it can’t exist and won’t exist.
Yes, it’s true, many people who are doing something because they have no choice would rather be doing something else!
“Yes, it’s true, many people who are doing something because they have no choice would rather be doing something else!”
So why not make that choice better?
“So why not make that choice better?”
The troll just thinks he’s being clever since I didn’t add “… but in a car” at the end of my sentence. Pay it no mind.
Ben, when are you going to kick these fools off?
“Ben, when are you going to kick these fools off?”
Isn’t that what highway proponents say to pro-transit people like you? It’s funny how you turn into a “mode warrior” when someone suggests an alternative form of TRANSIT that doesn’t fit YOUR narrow vision. From what I’ve seen, many pro-rail activists are just as close-minded as car-lovers, maybe worse. And that’s coming from a rail fan.
ATE, that’s the “Steve” troll that had its comments stricken. Note the image it’s using.
Ignore it.
PRTxorcist, the difference being that light rail has been successfully deployed in many settings large and small; that the risks, costs, benefits, and externialities are well-understood; that there are many suppliers available, each with real-world experience deploying the technology at scale; and that the technology has a long-term history available for analysis. None of these is true of PRT at the moment.
All the best,
–Nymous Ian
So by your logic, Ian, back in the late 1970s, people should have actively attacked the idea of compact discs because 8 Tracks were “successfully deployed in many settings large and small; that the risks, costs, benefits, and externialities are well-understood; that there are many suppliers available, each with real-world experience deploying the technology at scale; and that the technology has a long-term history available for analysis.”
I don’t believe anyone here is asking for a $10 billion handout from you personally. It’s just an idea that merits examination, given that existing options have severe limitations which will never get us to a point where automobiles are a rare sideshow in the world.
These technologies have duked it out for over a century and not only did the car win, it absolutely dominates. What’s the point in rerunning the same thing for 100 more years? It strikes me as bizarre that people in transportation have such a static view of technology.
Automated, personalizable transportation is a natural evolution from the current status quo. It’s going to happen. And you know what? One day something will replace that, too. No big deal.
Why don’t people try getting behind progress instead of fighting it because it just doesn’t fit their preconceptions?
“There are cases where a fact cannot come at all unless a preliminary faith exists in its coming. And where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say tbat faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the ‘lowest kind of immorality ‘ into which a thinking being can fall. Yet such is the logic by which our scientific absolutists pretend to regulate our lives.” – william james
Professor Vukan Vuchic
, (UPS Foundation Professor of Transportation Engineering
Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering
School of Engineering and Applied Science
Professor of City and Regional Planning
University of Pennsylvania):
“Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is claimed by its promoters )J. Edward Anderson, President of Taxi 2000 Corporation, and Jerry Schneider of the University of Washington, among others) to combine the advantages of rapid Transit private cars. Actually, this is an imaginary system based on an operationally and economically infeasible concept (elaborate infrastructure, yet low capacity) and has no realistic potential for application in urban transportation.” – “Transportation for Livable Cities” (Rutgers 1999):
Are there any peer-reviewed papers by transportation engineers that say PRT is feasible?
Ken, there are dozens of peer reviewed PRT papers, you know that. Don’t be obtuse.
And, FYI: Vuchic got it wrong. Have you ever actually read his anti-PRT argument? Well I have. It’s in his book Urban Transit Systems and Technology. His anti-PRT argument is fundamentally flawed.
His primary thrust against PRT is in the “way capacity” chapter. “Way capacity” is defined as the maximum *theoretical* carrying capacity of a transit line. In other words, if there were absolutely no constraints and vehicles were running at very high speeds NONSTOP, how many passengers could be carried.
Vuchic’s way-capacity graph shows PRT capacity very low compared to the other modes, but it has no real world relevance. It may be theoretically possible to run 10-car trains 20 seconds apart with no stopping at 50mph, but how would passengers load and unload? Vuchic was dismissing PRT based on a theoretical comparison that took no real world constraints into account.
I’d like to emphasize that point again: Vuchic was comparing PRT capacity to a 10-car train running 50mph and 20 seconds separation! There was no accounting for passenger stops, not even at the beginning or end of the line. So this was basically an amusement park ride: load a bunch of riders onto 10 10-car trains, get them up to 50mph, and let them loop around the track at 20 second separation. And use that as the basis for comparison to PRT. He made similar assumptions for smaller trains, light rail, and buses, all of them showing much greater theoretical passenger capacity, and ignoring stations and other stops which would cut those capacities by a factor of at least FIVE.
This is the thrust of Vuchic’s PRT capacity argument.
It’s like comparing a Ferrari to a Smart Car for city driving, and choosing the Ferrari because it can go 200mph – even though it will never be able to go past 40 on city streets. It’s a flawed comparison.
For reference, if someone has Vuchic’s text, the graph I am referring to is on page 175.
A.T.E.: “Ken, there are dozens of peer reviewed PRT papers…”
Avidor: Please post links to studies or articles in the last ten years saying PRT is feasible for urban transportation that are by transportation engineers and peer-reviewed by transportation engineers. Thanks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcyVc6cYiLo
Pretty cool, huh? What more demonstration do you need that something works than watching it working?
If you say it doesn’t count because that track is not used for day-to-day operation–well, then lets build a system to use for day-to-day operation!
Oh, and if you’re interested in transit systems that reduce land usage, check out pages 18 and 19 of this document. They show how a pair of PRT guideways carries as many passengers per hour as a highway with three lanes each direction, but using only one twentieth as much land; that a PRT system running along an urban road can carry more passengers per hour than the road itself, again using a fraction of the land; and that the reduction in parking spaces necessary in urban areas (or suburban, for that matter) as a result of using PRT can lead to more land being available for public, open spaces or for residential or commercial development that increases the population density of the area. And we all know that more public spaces for pedestrians and cyclists, better access to fast and convenient transit, and increased population density lead to improved health, more opportunity for socializing and community-building, lower energy costs, lower emissions, less congestion and aggravation and safer roads.
It may look like magic, but any sufficiently advanced technology does! It, of course, is not magic, but the result of much thought and scrutiny over many years and, yes, many failed projects. Of course, not nearly as many failed attempts as it took before we achieved heavier-than-air human flight. It’s a good thing the Wright brothers didn’t use previous failed attempts as an excuse not to make a go of it themselves. Failure of specific designs and implementations did not imply that the goal of manned flight itself was unachievable.
It’s ironic that while the title of this blog post is “Pod People Wage War on Light Rail”, the discussion has pretty much solely consisted of a few LRT supporters attacking PRT, relentlessly and often with ad hominem arguments instead of technical critiques. What technical critiques have been offered we have responded to with potential solution, all of which have been included in the design of some of the latest proposed systems. We have stated repeatedly that we are in favor of all forms of transit–PRT, LRT, BRT, whatever–but that we simply see PRT as being more attractive to potential users as well as more efficient in cost, energy and time. We of course can’t know with absolute certainty until we build a system–so let’s build a system!
Yes, we think PRT can do a better job than LRT in urban settings. But we also think PRT can do the job in places where LRT simply can’t, like in suburban areas. So it’s perfectly possible to implement PRT systems that do not directly compete with LRT systems, and in fact complement them. More people will ride the urban LRT if they can get to the city easily from their suburb without their car, and without adding to the automobile congestion of the city and requiring more urban land for automobile parking.
If your goal is to support LRT at all costs, then I guess I can make no argument to convince you to consider PRT. If your goal is livable streets, dense neighborhoods, and returning control of the streets to pedestrians and cyclists, then you should be open to any transit option that provides these benefits. PRT is one of them.
Streetsblog has given the anti-PRT a chance to voice their opinions. But no one solution holds the answers to all our TOD problems, so in the spirit of free debate I encourage Streetsblog to interview someone who is involved in building or designing a PRT system so that we can hear their side of the story, in their own words.
Now cue the demagoguery of KA…
Silliness. Here you go, publications from Journal of Advanced Transportation, American Society of Civil Engineers conferences, Journal of the Transportation Research Board, etc. Do you really think all these peer-reviewed publications would be accepted for a “fantasy system”? PRT feasibility has been a given since 1978 when Cabintaxi ran a full scale multi-vehicle prototype non-stop for over a year in systems endurance testing without a single fault. The notion that PRT is infeasible is patently absurd.
Anyway, here you go, a bunch of peer-reviewed publications from transportation journals. Some of them are from before your “last 10 years” deadline, because frankly, most of the core research for PRT was established decades ago and is no longer a topic of debate or research.
JE Anderson, Journal of Advanced Transportation, Dependability as a measure of on-time performance of personal rapid transit systems
JE Anderson, Safety Science, Safe design of personal rapid transit systems
JE Anderson, Proceedings of 8th International ASCE Conference on Automated People Movers, The Taxi 2000 Personal Rapid Transit System
JE Anderson, Journal of Advanced Transportation, Synchronous or clear-path control in personal rapid transit systems
JE Anderson, Journal of Advanced Transportation, A review of the state of the art of personal rapid transit
Ingmar Andréasson, Journal of the Transportation Research Board,
Reallocation of Empty Personal Rapid Transit Vehicles en Route
JH Lee, D Shin, YK Kim, Journal of the Korean Society for the Railway, A Study on the Headway of the Personal Rapid Transit System (Google translated from Korean)
J Ma, JB Schneider, Journal of Advanced Transportation, Designing personal rapid transit (PRT) networks
Supin L. Yoder, Sidney E. Weseman, John DeLaurentiis, Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Capital Costs and Ridership Estimates of Personal Rapid Transit
Steve Raney, Journal of the Transportation Research Board, Suburban Silver Bullet: Personal Rapid Transit Shuttle and Wireless Commuting Assistant with Cellular Location Tracking
Ingmar Andréasson, 3rd ASCE Conference for APMs, Simulation of Large PRT Systems for Swedish Cities
By the way, this doesn’t include any publications prior to 1990. There were a bunch from the mid-1970 which helped establish the state of the technology. There is also the book by Jack Irving, who headed the Aerospace Corporation’s in-depth investigation of PRT in the early 1970s. The Aerospace Corporation was associated with NASA and was involved in getting astronauts to the moon and back before they took on PRT. Their text is considered the foundational work for all personal rapid transit research that followed.
Shall I dig up more Ken?
FAIL!
I said transportation engineers peer-reviewed by transportation engineers in the last ten years… Ed Anderson? Steve Raney?, ATRA?…
EPIC FAIL!
One of A.T.E.’s links if for a paper on the failed Raytheon PRT project in Rosemont, Illinois:
“In addition to the cost study, a PRT ridership forecasting approach and projections were evaluated, providing another key element of decision support for potential PRT deployment in Rosemont.”
How much did that boondoggle cost the taxpayers, A.T.E?
“I said transportation engineers peer-reviewed by transportation engineers in the last ten years… Ed Anderson? Steve Raney?, ATRA?…”
Really? So basically, it has to be an engineer whom you respect as an authority, but by definition you don’t respect any engineer who is a “PRTista”.
Nice self-fulfilling prophecy you’ve devised there, Ken. 🙂
As I said, PRT feasibility has not been a topic of debate for DECADES, except in the minds of deniers like you. Cabintaxi ran multiple vehicles on its test network for over a full year without a single fault – and that was in the 1970s when room-sized supercomputers didn’t have the anywhere near the computing power of today’s talking greeting cards! ULTra PRT has been running vehicles on its test guideway for several years now, and has received approval from British regulators to carry passengers. Regulatory approval Ken!
Are you really still clinging to your infeasibility argument?
The papers I listed above are all in respected transportation publications. Papers are reviewed by fellow transportation engineers. The ASCE and TRB do not deal in fantasy Ken, PRT is real despite your relentless attempts to deny it! I honestly can’t believe I still have to say that.
Hi Nate, I didn’t make any suggestion about the best way to proceed, I just pointed out some facts. That PRT does not now satisfy these requirements is not evidence that it never will. It is evidence that it should not be deployed in New York or other large urban settings at this time. One must learn to walk before one can run.
“That PRT does not now satisfy these requirements is not evidence that it never will. It is evidence that it should not be deployed in New York or other large urban settings at this time. One must learn to walk before one can run.”
We couldn’t agree more. We don’t expect transit systems all over the country to adopt PRT before they’ve seen it work in real life. But like any new technology it needs early adopters in order to demonstrate that. A few decades ago a bunch of people had to walk around with giant, clunky cellular phones for a few years before the technology could be refined. But after the feasibility was demonstrated and improvements were made to the technology, it quickly took off in popularity. Now many people can’t imagine living without a cell phone.
What some are arguing for is for no one to implement PRT–in effect, to never even try to build a full-scale system that services and actual transit need. Not even one. That is clearly a great hinderance to being able to prove that the system actually works, which is a great boon to its opponents’ agendas, but only slows down inevitable progress.
As for PRT being used as an excuse to attack liberal transit projects, consider this: if PRT can be operated at a profit (user fee attainable exceeds per passenger cost of operation), unlike conventional transit, that means that a government-owned PRT system can create a revenue source for the government rather than be a revenue sinkhole. That means that less public money has to be spent on transit, and hence more public money is available to spend on other social programs and public works, such as funding public education and hospitals, developing green space, hiring cops and firemen, and installing or improving bike lanes and greenways. That also means that liberal officials can remain in office longer because they don’t have to raise people’s taxes as much or as often, and so in the end more liberal policy can be enacted without distraction from conservatives about raising taxes. Just think if the NYC transit system produced a net revenue from operations. There wouldn’t be any talk of fare hikes or service cuts, and a lot less time would be spent in Albany worrying about how to fund transit, leaving more time for addressing other pressing issues.