U.C. Berkeley ASCE second General Meeting
October 11th, 2001, 5 p.m. in 502 Davis Hall

Personal Rapid Transit for Advanced Transit Suburbs

Personal Rapid Transit ("PRT") consists of many light-weight, driverless 4 person electric vehicles traveling on a monorail 16' above the ground. Transit stops are located by the front entrance of buildings. Frequent stops are situated along the route to minimize walking once the trip ends. Transit stop tracks are separated from the main track - vehicles turn off onto a siding to pick up and drop off passengers. Because of these turn-offs, vehicles travel non-stop to the destination at 30 mph, bypassing intermediate stops and speeding at twice the average speed of autos on the congested roads below. Vehicle weight minimization reduces the size of the monorail and supporting piers, dramatically reducing construction cost and right of way acquisition. Vehicles flow through the monorail almost like data packets on the internet, anticipating demand so that wait time is eliminated.

A typical transit village around a rapid transit rail station occupies a 1/4 mile radius. An advanced transit suburb blankets a much larger area with many PRT stations. The self-funding PRT grid serves mixed use areas with 20,000+ workers/residents per square mile. The grid increases the efficiency of carpool/vanpool, rail, preference bus, and bike commutes to reduce single occupancy vehicle trips by 20% or more. The grid accommodates the complex travel needs of knowledge workers, providing rapid access to lunchtime convenience activities without the hassles of car parking. Unused parking spaces are reclaimed for more productive use. Clean air, retail sales, real-estate values, and employee retention rates increase.

Meeting topics will include: Intelligent transportation systems concepts applied to PRT, ridership forecasts, control system software/simulation, brick wall stops, station design, earthquakes, Randal O'Toole (Portland) demystified.

Speaker: Steve Raney, Cities21.org, UCB City Planning student, Columbia MBA, RPI computer science masters.

October 11 PowerPoint Slides, 1.2MB download.

Related links:

Cities21.org: advanced transit suburbs

PRT introduction: http://www.electric-bikes.com/prt.htm

The ultimate PRT web site: http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans/

ULtra - new U.K. PRT system: http://www.atsltd.co.uk/index.html, http://www.atsltd.co.uk/ultra_pdfs/ultra_text.pdf, http://www.atsltd.co.uk/ultra_pdfs/lowson1.pdf

U.C. Berkeley ASCE chapter: http://www.ce.berkeley.edu/~asce/

Berkeley Transportation Library. Many PRT and automated people mover references near TA 1207.A98: http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/ITSL/