[sustran] Re: Following the Yellow Brick Road to PRT

[Jerry Schneider]

At 09:13 AM 1/8/05 -0800, you wrote:



>Date: Thu, 06 Jan 2005 20:58:19 +0000
>From: Alan P Howes <alan at ourpeagreenboat.co.uk>
>To: Asia and the Pacific sustainable transport
>     <sustran-discuss at list.jca.apc.org>
>Subject: [sustran] Re: Following the Yellow Brick Road to PRT
>
>All noted - and I haven't had chance to follow Eric's links - but
>while PRT could probably be classed as APM, by no means all APMs are
>PRT.
>
>PRT has to be at very least few to many, and ideally many to many.
>Most APMs that I know of - including, I guess, all the ones that have
>actually been implemented - are few to few, if not one to one (e.g.
>APMs at airports).
>
>Can anyone prove me wrong?

What would you accept as proof? All that is available at present (i.e. 
published)
is a simulation study for Goteburg, Sweden, a few years ago. This paper is 
available
at: http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/ingsim.htm

It produced some very interesting, detailed performance results for an O/D 
pattern
(not clearly defined) that is probably a many-to-few, am-peak. Some people 
think
that a many-to-many O/D pattern would be ideal for a
large scale PRT network in a fairly low-density, dispersed city (e.g. the 
U.S. and Australia).
However, the are probably many-to-few O/D patterns that could be served 
effectively as well.

I think that the best way to address this problem is to use well-developed 
simulation models and
various demand matrices to load the PRT network and see how it is likely to 
perform, in detail.
It is far beyond our intuitive powers to do such assessments. Descriptions 
of several PRT
simulation models are available at 
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/simu.htm, including
the one that has been used in Swedish studies.

In any case, no one is going to build a large PRT network anytime soon - 
test tracks/programs/certification come first, small applications second 
and then we will know a lot more about what to do next - if anything. And, 
aside from Korea (Seoul) there is no reason to think that PRT will find 
many applications in Asia or other parts of the developing world in the 
near future.