The layout and the climate of a city has the greatest impact on commuting by foot or by bike. I grew up in a city with plenty of bike trails, an LRT system that you could bring the bikes onto and a vibrant inner city residential area. Even then, pedestrian and bicycle commuters were basically limited to the inner city neighborhoods and during the summer months. Now I live in a city where summertime temperatures exceed 100 Fahrenheit, and the inner city had been abandoned for decades and is only now being gentrified. In this city, neither public transit, pedestrian nor cycling is common but are making a bit of a revival in the inner city. I think that due to the high cost of freeways (a recent expansion project just completed at the cost of $163 million per mile), it would behoove us to lay out a PRT grid in the business cores (there are three business cores here) and run spines out along the commute corridors linking the various park and ride stations then encourage community developers to build local PRT grids into their subdivisions to link into the commute spines. There are a lot of people who would like to use public transit but do not due to the lack of comfort and convenience and PRT is the concept that attempts to bring the comfort and convenience of the private automobile to public transit.

Biking and transit should be mutually reinforcing and are to some degree with existing public transit but to integrate them during the commute hours requires something like the PRT concept.

No form of transit should be considered in isolation. Walking, biking, public transit, PRT, car rentals, efficient private vehicles and car sharing organizations work best together to bring a higher quality of living to all of us and hopefully reduce the costs to the public coffers.

You speak as if biking and transit are mutually exclusive. They’re not. Both are in the business of getting people out of their cars, they just do it in different ways. So yes, there should be more bike lanes and bike parking facilities, more and safer space for pedestrians, and more walkable/bikable cities. But what do you do when biking somewhere is just not practical, for whatever reason? Right now, unless you’re lucky enough to live near a decent transit system, you have to drive. Those of us in favor of PRT are trying to change that.

Also note that biking and transit are mutually-reinforcing. When there is good transit available, fewer people drive, and thus there is more room for cyclists on the street. Likewise when more people bike or walk, there is more demand for transit when those people need to get somewhere faster than biking or walking can get them there.

Second, these worries about PRT’s theoretical impact are misplaced. As John says, we already have a large network of private vehicles roadways. But there are several problems with this one. Just to name one of many: they are generally all at-grade, with the notable exception of freeways, and as such are more inefficient, slow, and dangerous than they would be if elevated. Elevating roadways is extremely expensive, though, which is why we don’t do it except for major roads. But PRT vehicles are comparatively lightweight, and as a result all it taxes is about a 3′x3′ steel guideway that can be erected in a matter of days for just a few tens of millions a mile–as opposed to the hundreds of millions a mile it costs to install at-grade light rail. This is one of the cheapest forms of transitway elevation.

Then there is the allegation that PRT looks too futuristic. All I can say is, grow up. If there’s a transit technology that can reduce car dependence and tempt people out of their cars and it’s cheaper, more efficient, faster and more attractive to riders than conventional transit, I don’t care what it looks like, I want it.

If PRT is adopted, there will be fewer cars on the road because people will have a fast, convenient and reliable transit option available to them. That means more room on the road for cyclists and pedestrians, not to mention emergency vehicles. Also, most forms of PRT are bike-friendly–you can take your bike on-board with you any time of day, even during rush hour, regardless of how many other riders are also taking their bikes. How many transit systems can say that?

PRT is nothing to be afraid of. In fact, PRT is just a natural and logical extension of conventional transit once you make all the marginal improvements you can make to it. Everybody likes more frequent service and express service; PRT just takes it to the extreme. When you take a conventional rail system and elevate it, automate it, and optimize it for speed and efficiency, PRT is what you get.

Sharing the pathways with cyclists motorists and pedestrians would prove to be a difficult task for the computers and would require that the PRT’s operate at lower speeds.

However the PRT concept is supposed to be inexpensive guideways, literally just I-beams and the idea is that they should be less to build than pedestrian paths as the loading would actually be less.

Unfortunately, all attempts at a PRT system so far has been perverted such that the guideways were overbuilt as well as the vehicles. The MorganTown system was supposed to be small cabs carrying no more than six passengers but when Boeing took over, it ballooned into the 12 passenger GRT that it is today. Also due to tight timeline for constructing the Morgantown system, the contractor for the guideways was told to design the guideway as if they were supporting LRT’s hence the huge concrete monstrosities. Likewise the Raytheon 2000 system was required to use proven parts for the undercarriage which meant designing the undercarriage and track out of off the shelf LRT parts again resulting in a monstrosity of a guideway.

Yes, utilizing existing roadways may be one way to economize on a PRT but that is hardly using inexpensive guideways. A road is built for cars and is overkill for PRT systems, the idea is to eventually supplant the need for roads and you can’t do that by relying on them.

What is with the skyway track, completely unnecessary. A well designed PodCar can follow a green line, just watch the green rather than the edge of a skyway.

Podcars work great with bicycles, the two can use the same lane safely in a marked lane.

Ultra has some of the supidest marketig people I have seen. There is a French version that just follows along any curb.

Better idea. Market the podcars running with bicycles and perhaps other ultralites. Skip the separate skyway, erase all of Ultra nonsensical simulated skyway jetson crap. That company is just ruining the environment for innovative technology, use the damn roads. The problem is not taking away lanes for bikes, the solution is combining podcars and bikes and keeping both separate from 2000 pound blocks of steel. Use a simple 4 inch curb to separate podcars and bikes from automobiles. Reduce the cost by about 50% as a result, quit listening to idiots from England.

Do it this way, and look at the sales pitch. Instead of a 20 million dolar small system, a city can buy one or 2 podcars, add a curb and try it out.

The computer systems are distributed and relatively unreliable but have proven that only localized partial route information is necessary as well as only local sensors with some regional periodic broadcasts of general traffic conditions over radio waves. The financing scheme is distributed and essentially financed by the end user which has lead to an oversupply of vehicles hence requiring parking facilities but this personalization has allowed for certain marketing forces such as luxury vehicles and designed obsolescence to allow for a greater consumption that facilitates a production growth profit margin that has been attractive to investors and the end user indemnifies the vehicle manufacturers and the guideway providers of most of the liabilities involved.

Ultimately, PRT’s should be developed as it helps make the city become more pedestrian.

In general the concept has been proven, it’s now a matter of implementing it conscientiously instead of strictly for profit. I do believe that your criticisms are uncalled for primarily because they are an attempt to identify technical shortcomings, all of which can be addressed, it’s the sociological and profit motivation considerations that prevent the concept from being developed.

From a technical perspective, the concept must focus on a low cost per mile for the lines as it needs to be ubiquitous. Pilot projects need to include a long commute corridor in order to garner the support of those already accepting of mass transit even though this may initially be at the expense of other mass transit concepts. Control, routing and collision avoidance must be as localized as possible with peer to peer as well as central coordination communication, 100% central coordination may be an intractable problem, congestion may be better addressed with protocols much as it is in the communication field. Designs that avoid elevated pathways in residential neighborhoods or obscure visibility while in these neighborhoods will be needed to preserve privacy in subdivisions which are retrofitted for these systems rather than designed for them. The designs need to allow for elevated, surface and below grade portions. On board power storage designs requires a means of recharging perhaps inductively while on the longer tracks and while at stations, track delivered power should also be considered but not if it represents a significant increase in per mile costs. Track switching must allow for switching without changing directional orientation in order to allow for comfortable high speed lane changes (a double bogey system should suffice for this), this can also allow for offline sideways berthing without an extensive offline track in lower speed cells.

Coal ranges, iceboxes and outside toilets were 19th century “proven technology” too - so you better not have given up on these either.

Sure, YOU may never use prt no matter how convenient it might turn out to be because you love your bike and go everywhere on it. But the truth is you’d be in a very small minority. Most of the distance travelled by bikes is on the roofs of SUVs heading for recreational cycling areas!

(1) $2 per ride break-even point is not my estimate. It is the estimate of respected engineering consultants who have no prior experience with PRT. So take it up with SKM Consulting if you don’t trust the $2 estimate. SKM is responsible for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of large scale infrastructural projects over the last 40 years.

(2) Once again, talk to the engineers from SKM, who have calculated the ~$40M estimate for a starter system based on extensive analysis of cities. Note: the amount of right-of-way required for PRT is trivial because has almost zero street-level impact. PRT ROW costs are more on par with power/cable/phone line ROW than a transit system.

(3) OK, so San Francisco doesn’t have streetcars? SF doesn’t have BART? SF doesn’t have automobiles and traffic congestion? Come on! You object to PRT while endorsing trains and buses - what kind of hypocritical position is that? PRT is a public TRANSIT system which is cheaper, greener, more efficient, more available, and more accessible than other systems, yet you rail against it even while purporting to support transit. That is a completely indefensible position. When SF eliminates all mechanized travel and becomes a modern day Beijing with 90% of commuters on bicycles, then perhaps your position will become reasonable; in today’s world, it’s pure hypocrisy.

(4) News flash, Turtles: people in the US already love their automobiles. Maybe you missed it - it happened right around 1950. Your argument that PRT will cause the masses to somehow discover “love of the automobile” is positively laughable! Now let’s take a step back from your fantasy world where everyone rides their bike to work and the masses haven’t yet discovered these newfangled automobiles - in the real world, PRT would get some of those 90% of people who would never go anywhere without their car, and get them onto the transit system.

Or we can continue to bury our heads under our shells (pun intended) and pretend that rail and buses will protect us from the evils of the automobile - they haven’t for the last 70 years and they won’t for the next 70 years, because they can’t efficiently cover every neighborhood with convenient, frequent service. PRT can do that - it can reach into neighborhoods and extend the reach of existing streetcars and metros, and do so for less cost per passenger than even low-frequency bus service. PRT can make transit on the whole more effective and more attractive - becoming a critical component of a city’s overall transit infrastructure along with metro rail systems and buses, and finally making inroads against the automobile.

2) As for the $40-50 ‘for a starter system’ — I assume you mean the cost of building the huge infrastructure required for an above-road/building track system, which has no actual costs associated with purchasing land for entrances and support beams. You cannot install an above-ground system in a dense urban area without purchasing the land from private owners, which will cost you millions per mile, let alone actual physical building costs. C’mon…

3) I live in a community (San Francisco) that doesn’t require me to travel 20 miles anywhere– because I live a quality green life where I can ride my bike, walk, and take public transit when necessary. I don’t need a private motorized vehicle to get me where I need to go– be it an automobile or one of your silly pods.

4) Basically you Pod People are proposing a non-operator controlled car on a single-track, which leaves us with: the reduced autonomy that lead to the love of the automobile without improving energy efficiency of multi-passenger vehicles. It’s basically the worst of all the worlds– but hey, at least you don’t have to share your space with the poor people who ride the bus, so I guess you win…

Per rider expenses: less than $2 per ride is projected to cover all operational costs PLUS capital costs - meaning that PRT could not only eliminate all subsidy, but even generate a modest profit.

These estimates are based on multiple independent engineering analyses - one such intensive analysis was done by SKM Consulting in the UK for the city of Daventry. See my earlier comments for links.

So on one side we have several engineering conglomerates (like C2HM Hill, a huge firm which has managed several multi-billion dollar projects like the Panama Canal renovation, and is now buiding the PRT-centric car-free Masdar City), MIT engineers, Foster & Parners design, and hundreds of transit professionals on 3 continents.

On the other side, we have a single cartoonist, who just happens to have ties to competing rail industry lobbying interests, and someone named “turtles”.

You decide.

As for bicyclists wanting to ride their bikes - yeah, but if you have to travel 20 miles across town, wouldn’t it be nice to have the OPTION to use a pod for part of your trip? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a pod for rainy days, or days when you’re in a hurry, or days when your under the weather and don’t feel like riding?

Tell me, where’s the downside for a bicyclist? If you are so adamant about not using a pod, you don’t have to use it, but you’ll still benefit from reduced congestion on the roads, so when you DO want to ride, you don’t have to battle as many cars.

Answer: for bicyclists, there is no downside to PRT, and plenty of upside. Which is why it really puzzles me to know that some of the most ardent critics of PRT are bicyclists. It doesn’t make any sense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql744tSfnXM

And of all the garbage I just read in these comments from ATSE (Peter, just ignore the trolls, especially when unrelated to 1) bikes and 2) SF, especially)…
I have to respond to this: “PRT vehicles are all bicycle friendly, just roll your bike in and sit down. How can that not be attractive to bicyclists? ”

People who ride bikes like riding bikes- not rolling their bike into some fantastical monorail-car-for-one…

Here’s a few simple questions with what should be simple answers for you PRTists… what is the estimated cost per mile of this idea? Per rider expenses (regardless of local/federal subsidies)?

But there’s a difference: with PRT, suburban service will be as flexible as city service. Typically today, suburban transit goes into the city and that’s it. If you’re going sideways, no luck unless you want to ride all the way into the city, transfer, and ride back out to your suburban destination.

But because PRT is a network, suburb-to-suburb travel will be just as convenient as intra-city or suburb-to-city travel.

Some systems propose a variation called “dual mode PRT”, which would allow PRT vehicles to leave the guideway and be human operated for the last 1/4 mile to the house. I don’t generally prefer these systems because they imply private ownership of vehicles and I think that complicates routing and city-side storage of vehicles, but several groups are working on such systems. Also, several single-mode PRT systems have long term plans to eventually allow dual-mode operation for the trip to your doorway, possibly involving low-speed automatic navigation on the street itself.

But the systems discussed at the Ithaca conference (and the one being deployed at Heathrow) are single-mode, and I believe that is the better approach for the initial phases. Single mode doesn’t offer to-the-door service, but it does promise high density stations (perhaps every 1/4 to 1/2 mile), direct point-to-point service, 24 hour operation, no waits, universal accessibility, and low operating costs - all of which are big improvements over existing transit.

http://prt.blip.tv/file/876203/

More videos about PRT here:

http://prt.blip.tv/posts?view=archive&nsfw=dc