The Design, Operation and Benefits of an Optimized PRT System

The design of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), has been driven by the need to find a way to relieve urban congestion while reducing or eliminating the need for transit subsidies, reducing air pollution, and minimizing dependence on oil. To find such a solution it has been necessary to set aside characteristics of conventional transit and without prejudice seek to discover transit-system characteristics that will fulfill the desired needs. The new system must be designed to minimize its costs while maximizing its ridership and meeting required levels of capacity, safety, reliability, security, and comfort with minimum energy use, minimum pollution, minimum land use, minimum material use, and minimum disruption during installation. It must be able to work with conventional transit systems and make them more effective. The aim of this paper is to show how the objectives of an optimized PRT design effort have been realized.