One of the problems with PRT is that it requires a network
to function at its full potential, and cities and investors alike are reluctant
to fund such a complex, untried undertaking. Unfortunately a small, trial loop reflects
nothing about how a bigger system would work. It’s like giving some pickup trucks and a circular
track to Amazonian tribesmen. Vehicles
are only as enabling as their routes will allow.
I have, for this reason, given particular focus on the
problems of minimal networks, since this will always be the starting point,
like it or not. Configurations such as a
single loop, unfortunately, do not make a very compelling case for PRT when
compared to more traditional alternatives. Yet this is a battle that should not be ceded,
because businessmen need the prospect of near-term profits as well as hopes of
a long term bonanza. Therefore a design
that is superior in this respect is the more lucrative offering.
To illuminate this point, let’s consider a starter loop
with, say, four stations. Our imaginary
system goes 35 mph, and has one second headways between vehicles. Let’s further stipulate that the stations are
in pairs, say two stations downtown and a pair two miles away, say, in a
hospital/hotel district. This is so we
can better count the passengers, who will be assumed to be traveling between
the two main areas, making a two mile trip.
That means that at maximum capacity, a vehicle will come
into one of the two stations at the end of the loop every second, so if there
is full, equal demand, there will be an arriving vehicle at each station every
two seconds. That means, to keep the
whole thing going, there must also be a vehicle leaving each station every two seconds
as well.
That is challenging logistically. In order to have a vehicle leaving every two
seconds, there will need to be many people boarding a large number of vehicles
at once. For example, let’s suppose it
takes 30 seconds to get access and get seated. There will need to be 15 parties boarding
simultaneously, just to keep up. There
will also be 15 parties leaving the vehicles – hopefully a bit faster, let’s
say 20 seconds. Let’s say there is a 10
second delay between people leaving and people boarding. (After all, at least
sometimes the vehicles will have to move up.) That
means that if each vehicle is in the station for only 60 seconds, the station
will still need 30 births. And that is
with everything working like a clock.
Unlike these illustrations, obviously such a station would
be a beehive of activity, and everything would have to be working perfectly to
get those vehicles in and out in sixty seconds! I imagine that there would be green and red
lights and self-locking gates to regulate access to the vehicles.
For the curious, here are some additional,
extrapolated numbers. 35 mph = 184,800 feet per hour = 3080
ft. feet per minute = 51.3 feet per second, which gives us our headway
distance. At this full capacity there are 102 vehicles
on each mile of track, or 204 each way on our two mile example. If there are always 30 in each station, that
equals 120, so 204 x 2 = 408 +120 = 528 separate vehicles.
It is easy to see how people would regard PRT as hopelessly
impractical after reflecting on these considerations. After all, a single light rail train can carry
400 people at once. Let’s do the math. If each pair of stations does, indeed, deliver
a vehicle each second between them, that is sixty per minute, or 3600 per hour.
Assuming something like the 1.2
passengers per vehicle average that is common for auto traffic, that is 4320
passengers per hour, each way. That is
just over what a four-car light rail train can carry with just ten trips per
hour, or one train every six minutes. Buses,
on a designated “busway”, running with headways of about a minute, can also
boast similar capacities. Either seems
much easier than PRT.
But let’s look at the other side of the coin. First of all, where can you find enough
pedestrians to even walk through the doors of such a station at that rate for
more than a couple of hours a day? Disney
World? Niagara Falls? It will be far
more typical to spread the load out with more, smaller stations. So this example greatly favors large capacity
vehicles. Furthermore, in such a “back
and forth” layout, it would be highly unlikely that people would want to pay a
premium for a private vehicle for such a short trip. It would be a simple matter to use at least 75%
of them as shuttles, at a fraction of the fare, taking four passengers at a
time. That boosts capacity to almost
12000 passengers per hour. Use of GRT (group rapid transit) vehicles would
probably result in still higher capacities, although headways would have to be greater,
and track would have to be beefier as well.
The cost for light rail is phenomenally high, like 60
million USD per mile just for the track. Compare that with the often quoted
estimate of 15 million per mile for PRT, and it’s pretty easy to see where the
money for all of those vehicles could come from!
Adding only a few additional stations starts to really break
down the advantages that buses and trains enjoy. These large vehicles are slow to start and
stop, dropping their round-trip speeds down with each new station. (On the
other hand, 35 mph is conservative for PRT, especially for the SMART system
depicted, which can easily achieve highway speeds and is designed to mitigate G
forces) Large transit vehicles block
traffic, and are very expensive to elevate to avoid this. Every stop inconveniences the vast majority of
passengers who not boarding or getting off.
Once there are a dozen or so stops, it’s really a mess. From a simple perspective of real estate
usage, large vehicles MUST accommodate large crowds to justify their presence. The advantage of scale (of LRT and BRT)
becomes a disadvantage when it comes to offline stations or other means of
passing. In fact, it could be argued
that even simple bus stops, in congested areas, often do more harm than good. While the bus is stopped, or is nearly so, it
is using valuable real estate that could better be used for facilitating the
flow of ordinary traffic. This is
especially true if there are only one or two passengers using that stop. With
light rail a similar condition exists. Every
stop must justify the wait for all through-passengers, as well as pedestrians
and vehicles that would otherwise be able to cross the tracks. Therefore light rail should have as few and as
large stations as conditions will permit. How few and how large? That is debatable, but it seems to me that
holding up 400 passengers to let a dozen or so off and on is real waste. This certainly gives a clue as to how to make
these heavier forms of transit more effective. It seems that there should be a limit on how
small of a station should be permitted, as well as a limit on the number of
stations, period.
I think this raises an interesting question, particularly in
regard to light rail. Could PRT actually
be good for this form of transit instead of competing with it? Let’s start with some parameters. Say we want
to limit the number of stops and
increase the passenger usage at those stops so that there is no less than 10%
turnover at each stop, with 10 stops total on a loop, so most passengers would
only have to wait through 5. If the
train has a capacity of 400, that is an exchange of 40 at each stop. Let’s say that we want to provide the
convenience of a train every 5 minutes. That’s
480 pedestrians boarding at each stop per hour, or 8 “walk-ups” per minute. Even this, except for rush hour and perhaps
lunch time, seems like a lot for most areas. Could PRT be used to deliver those passengers?
It’s a provocative notion. After all, light rail is often run at less
than capacity, and is generally constrained by the lack of routes with
sufficient riders to justify its enormous cost. It would seem that they might have much to
gain by offering a more global transportation solution. Do light rail venders even suggest multi-modal
approaches? For example it would seem
like a no-brainer to link “park&ride” buses with certain light rail stops. After all, in order to have good geographical
coverage along a route, there are liable to be some stops that bring in fewer
passengers. Why not make such non-performers into interfaces with other
systems, like buses or PRT? That way
every station is worth the time and trouble, every time.