[sustran] Following the Yellow Brick Road to PRT

[EcoPlan, Paris]

Dear Friends,

 

Sorry to poke my big nose into this, but the fact is that I have looked long
and hard at this family of systems over the years and I would like at least
to point any of you who might be interested into sources where you can find
accurate information about actual deployments and plans.

 

The first place to turn in my book is Larry Fabian's diligently maintained
Trans21 database has for the last thirty years provided good coverage of
these developments which you will find detailed at http://www.airfront.us
<http://www.airfront.us/> .  He defines his target as APMs, to whit: "An
Automated People Mover is a passenger transport system with high levels of
electronic intelligence so that vehicles are operated by computers over
exclusive guideways without need for attendants. Progressive engineers and
planners have worked on APMs since the 1960s, and today over 100
installations operate around the world."  He then goes on to identify some
114 working implementatoins at http://www.airfront.us/PDFs/Count04.pdf and
a couple of dozen "APM projects underway" (perhaps a bit optimistic that) at
http://www.airfront.us/PDFs/ActiveAPMConstruction-2004.pdf

 

Fabian has often noted that the most likely places for deployment of this
family of systems are areas where there is a single owner and purpose, which
has over the last decades boiled down mainly to airport, leisure center and
similar installations. And while he complicates his good list by including a
dozen automated metros, these last in any event are in my view far more
indicative of what new technology is all about in our chosen area of
concern, rather than the Yellow Brick Road thesis (a phrase which,
incidentally, I very much wish I had invented in this context).

 

Other sources that can help fill out your information on this subject, if
you are still tempted:

 

*         Professor Jerry Schneider's Innovative Transportation Technologies
Website at http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans/

*         The Advanced Transportation Technologies e-group at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/advanced_transportation/

*         The Advanced Transit Association (http://advancedtransit.org
<http://advancedtransit.org/> )

 

I might note that there is little other than quick peripheral discussion of
PRT or its various cousins in the VTPI encyclopedia under "Public Transit
Improvements" which to me speaks volumes, at the very least in terms of the
preoccupations that the very great majority of us share here.

 

It is my sincere hope that we can now get off the Yellow Brick Road to PRT
and back to the very worthy and hugely challenging problems of sustainable
development and social justice which are the principal reason for our being
here.

 

Eric Britton

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