Personal Rapid Transit: The Future of Public Transportation Allowing Cities to Move and Breathe

By Fouad Sabry

What Is Personal Rapid Transit

Personal rapid transit (PRT), also known as podcars or guided/railed taxis, is a form of public transportation that utilizes small automated vehicles and operates them on a network of specially built guideways. Other names for this type of transportation include personal rapid transit (PRT) and guided/railed taxis. Automated guideway transit (AGT) is a kind of system that also comprises bigger vehicles and extends all the way down to smaller subway systems. PRT falls under the AGT category. When it comes to the paths that it takes, it leans more like personal public transportation systems.

How You Will Benefit

(I) Insights, and validations about the following topics:

Chapter 1: Personal rapid transit

Chapter 2: People mover

Chapter 3: Automated guideway transit

Chapter 4: Passenger rail terminology

Chapter 5: Cabinentaxi

Chapter 6: Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit

Chapter 7: ULTra (rapid transit)

Chapter 8: Headway

Chapter 9: SEA Underground

Chapter 10: Cable Liner

Chapter 11: Vought Airtrans

Chapter 12: Ford ACT

Chapter 13: Alden staRRcar

Chapter 14: ROMAG

Chapter 15: Computer-controlled Vehicle System

Chapter 16: Public transport

Chapter 17: Krauss-Maffei Transurban

Chapter 18: Dashaveyor

Chapter 19: Minitram

Chapter 20: List of automated transit networks suppliers

Chapter 21: Unbuilt Rosemont personal rapid transit system

(II) Answering the public top questions about personal rapid transit.

(III) Real world examples for the usage of personal rapid transit in many fields.

(IV) 17 appendices to explain, briefly, 266 emerging technologies in each industry to have 360-degree full understanding of personal rapid transit' technologies.

Who This Book Is For

Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information for any kind of personal rapid transit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: One Billion Knowledgeable
• Release date: Oct 25, 2022

Book preview

Copyright

Personal Rapid Transit Copyright © 2022 by Fouad Sabry. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover designed by Fouad Sabry.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Bonus

You can send an email to [e-mail] with the subject line Personal Rapid Transit: The future of public transportation allowing cities to move and breathe, and you will receive an email which contains the first few chapters of this book.

Fouad Sabry

Visit 1BK website at

www.1BKOfficial.org

Preface

Why did I write this book?

The story of writing this book started on 1989, when I was a student in the Secondary School of Advanced Students.

It is remarkably like the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) Schools, which are now available in many advanced countries.

STEM is a curriculum based on the idea of educating students in four specific disciplines — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — in an interdisciplinary and applied approach. This term is typically used to address an education policy or a curriculum choice in schools. It has implications for workforce development, national security concerns and immigration policy.

There was a weekly class in the library, where each student is free to choose any book and read for 1 hour. The objective of the class is to encourage the students to read subjects other than the educational curriculum.

In the library, while I was looking at the books on the shelves, I noticed huge books, total of 5,000 pages in 5 parts. The books name is The Encyclopedia of Technology, which describes everything around us, from absolute zero to semiconductors, almost every technology, at that time, was explained with colorful illustrations and simple words. I started to read the encyclopedia, and of course, I was not able to finish it in the 1-hour weekly class.

So, I convinced my father to buy the encyclopedia. My father bought all the technology tools for me in the beginning of my life, the first computer and the first technology encyclopedia, and both have a great impact on myself and my career.

I have finished the entire encyclopedia in the same summer vacation of this year, and then I started to see how the universe works and to how to apply that knowledge to everyday problems.

My passion to the technology started mor than 30 years ago and still the journey goes on.

This book is part of The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies which is my attempt to give the readers the same amazing experience I had when I was in high school, but instead of 20th century technologies, I am more interested in the 21st century emerging technologies, applications, and industry solutions.

The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies will consist of 365 books, each book will be focused on one single emerging technology. You can read the list of emerging technologies and their categorization by industry in the part of Coming Soon, at the end of the book.

365 books to give the readers the chance to increase their knowledge on one single emerging technology every day within the course of one year period.

Introduction

How did I write this book?

In every book of The Encyclopedia of Emerging Technologies, I am trying to get instant, raw search insights, direct from the minds of the people, trying to answer their questions about the emerging technology.

There are 3 billion Google searches every day, and 20% of those have never been seen before. They are like a direct line to the people thoughts.

Sometimes that’s ‘How do I remove paper jam’. Other times, it is the wrenching fears and secret hankerings they would only ever dare share with Google.

In my pursuit to discover an untapped goldmine of content ideas about Personal Rapid Transit, I use many tools to listen into autocomplete data from search engines like Google, then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question, the people are asking around the keyword Personal Rapid Transit.

It is a goldmine of people insight, I can use to create fresh, ultra-useful content, products, and services. The kind people, like you, really want.

People searches are the most important dataset ever collected on the human psyche. Therefore, this book is a live product, and constantly updated by more and more answers for new questions about Personal Rapid Transit, asked by people, just like you and me, wondering about this new emerging technology and would like to know more about it.

The approach for writing this book is to get a deeper level of understanding of how people search around Personal Rapid Transit, revealing questions and queries which I would not necessarily think off the top of my head, and answering these questions in super easy and digestible words, and to navigate the book around in a straightforward way.

So, when it comes to writing this book, I have ensured that it is as optimized and targeted as possible. This book purpose is helping the people to further understand and grow their knowledge about Personal Rapid Transit. I am trying to answer people’s questions as closely as possible and showing a lot more.

It is a fantastic, and beautiful way to explore questions and problems that the people have and answer them directly, and add insight, validation, and creativity to the content of the book – even pitches and proposals. The book uncovers rich, less crowded, and sometimes surprising areas of research demand I would not otherwise reach. There is no doubt that, it is expected to increase the knowledge of the potential readers’ minds, after reading the book using this approach.

I have applied a unique approach to make the content of this book always fresh. This approach depends on listening to the people minds, by using the search listening tools. This approach helped me to:

Meet the readers exactly where they are, so I can create relevant content that strikes a chord and drives more understanding to the topic.

Keep my finger firmly on the pulse, so I can get updates when people talk about this emerging technology in new ways, and monitor trends over time.

Uncover hidden treasures of questions need answers about the emerging technology to discover unexpected insights and hidden niches that boost the relevancy of the content and give it a winning edge.

The building block for writing this book include the following:

(1) I have stopped wasting the time on gutfeel and guesswork about the content wanted by the readers, filled the book content with what the people need and said goodbye to the endless content ideas based on speculations.

(2) I have made solid decisions, and taken fewer risks, to get front row seats to what people want to read and want to know — in real time — and use search data to make bold decisions, about which topics to include and which topics to exclude.

(3) I have streamlined my content production to identify content ideas without manually having to sift through individual opinions to save days and even weeks of time.

It is wonderful to help the people to increase their knowledge in a straightforward way by just answering their questions.

I think the approach of writing of this book is unique as it collates, and tracks the important questions being asked by the readers on search engines.

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is harder than I thought and more rewarding than I could have ever imagined. None of this would have been possible without the work completed by prestigious researchers, and I would like to acknowledge their efforts to increase the knowledge of the public about this emerging technology.

Dedication

To the enlightened, the ones who see things differently, and want the world to be better -- they are not fond of the status quo or the existing state. You can disagree with them too much, and you can argue with them even more, but you cannot ignore them, and you cannot underestimate them, because they always change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones or amateur, others see genius and innovators, because the ones who are enlightened enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do, and lead the people to the enlightenment.

Epigraph

Personal rapid transit (PRT), also known as podcars or guided/railed taxis, is a form of public transportation that utilizes small automated vehicles and operates them on a network of specially built guideways. Other names for this type of transportation include personal rapid transit (PRT) and guided/railed taxis. Automated guideway transit (AGT) is a kind of system that also comprises bigger vehicles and extends all the way down to smaller subway systems. PRT falls under the AGT category. When it comes to the paths that it takes, it leans more like personal public transportation systems.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Bonus

Preface

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Dedication

Epigraph

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Personal rapid transit

Chapter 2: People mover

Chapter 3: Automated guideway transit

Chapter 4: Passenger rail terminology

Chapter 5: Cabinentaxi

Chapter 6: Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit

Chapter 7: ULTra (rapid transit)

Chapter 8: Headway

Chapter 9: SEA Underground

Chapter 10: Cable Liner

Chapter 11: Vought Airtrans

Chapter 12: Ford ACT

Chapter 13: Alden staRRcar

Chapter 14: ROMAG

Chapter 15: Computer-controlled Vehicle System

Chapter 16: Public transport

Chapter 17: Krauss-Maffei Transurban

Chapter 18: Dashaveyor

Chapter 19: Minitram

Chapter 20: List of automated transit networks suppliers

Chapter 21: Unbuilt Rosemont personal rapid transit system

Epilogue

About the Author

Coming Soon

Appendices: Emerging Technologies in Each Industry

Chapter 1: Personal rapid transit

Personal rapid transit (PRT), also known as podcars or guided/railed taxis, is a form of public transportation that utilizes small automated vehicles and operates them on a network of specially built guideways. Other names for this type of transportation include personal rapid transit (PRT) and guided/railed taxis. Automated guideway transit (AGT) is a kind of system that also comprises bigger vehicles and extends all the way down to smaller subway systems. PRT falls under the AGT category. In terms of the routes that it takes, it leans more like personal public transportation systems.

PRT vehicles are normally designed for transporting little more than three to six people at a time, making them ideal for travel by individuals or small groups. The guideways are laid out in a network topology, and each station is situated on a siding. There are also several merge and diverge sites throughout the system. This makes it possible to go from one location directly to another without stopping at any intermediary stops. A taxi or a horizontal lift are two analogies that have been used to describe the point-to-point service (elevator).

There have been many different PRT systems suggested, but the most of them have not been put into action. As of the month of November in 2016, there are just a select few PRT systems that are operational: Since 1975, Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit in Morgantown, West Virginia, has maintained its operations, making it the city's oldest and most comprehensive rapid transit system. At Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a 10-vehicle 2getthere system has been in operation since 2010, and at London Heathrow Airport, a 21-vehicle Ultra PRT system has been in operation since 2011. In Suncheon, an official opening ceremony was held for a 40-vehicle Vectus system with in-line stations, The majority of public transportation systems transfer passengers in groups along predetermined itineraries. This has inefficiencies built right into it.

would provide future cities a highly accessible, user-responsive, environmentally friendly transit system that offers a sustainable and economic solution would provide future cities with a sustainable and economic solution

might generate a return that could compensate for most, if not all, of its construction expenses, as well as cover its operational costs.

would provide a degree of service that is superior than that which is offered via traditional forms of public transit.

would be something that the public, including those who utilize public transit and automobile users, would welcome.

The analysis also came to the conclusion that, in spite of these benefits, public bodies would not commit to establishing PRT due to the dangers involved with becoming the first public deployment of the technology.

J. Edward Anderson was the one who first publicly established the acronym PRT in the year 1978.

At the moment, there are five advanced transit networks (ATN) systems that are operating, and numerous more are currently in the development stage.

The list that follows provides a concise summary of numerous well-known automated transit network (ATN) vendors as of the year 2014, with later revisions.

Vectus, ULTra, 2getthere, and Boeing (Morgantown PRT) are the companies that provide the revenue service.

Modutram, Cabinentaxi, Glydways, and Urbanloop make up the whole test track.

JPods, skyTran, ecoPRT, Spartan Superway, Futran, and ottobahn are some examples of mockups or scale models.

CVS, Aramis, PRT2000 (Raytheon), and Tubenet Transit Systems are some historical examples.

Donn Fichter, a municipal transportation planner, initiated study on PRT and other alternative transportation options around the year 1953. This was the beginning of the modern principles of PRT. In 1964, Fichter released a book that outlined his ideas for an automated public transportation system for regions with a population density that ranged from medium to low. Fichter's belief that people would not give up their cars in favor of public transit unless the system offered flexibility and end-to-end transit times that were much better than existing systems was one of the most important points made in the book. Fichter believed that only a PRT system could provide the flexibility and performance that people would need in order to give up their cars. PRT was still largely obscure despite the fact that a number of other urban and transportation planners had also written on the subject and that early experiments had also taken place.

During this same time period, Edward Haltom was looking on monorail transportation systems. Because of the amount of time it takes to start and stop a standard big monorail train, such as the ones used on the Wuppertal Schwebebahn, Haltom observed that a single line could only carry between 20 and 40 cars per hour. It was necessary for the trains on such a system to be big enough to accommodate hundreds of people in order to achieve decent passenger traffic on the system (see headway for a general discussion). This, in turn, necessitated the construction of enormous guideways that were able to withstand the weight of these enormous trucks, which drove up the capital expenses to the point that he saw them as unappealing.

It wasn't until the late 1950s that people in the United States started to notice the issues caused by urban expansion. As a result of cities investing in better roads and reducing the amount of time it took for public transportation, people began to relocate out from the central business districts and into the newly created suburbs. Significant issues with air quality were being caused by a lack of pollution control systems, a fast increase in the number of people owning cars, and lengthier commutes to and from places of employment. In addition, migration to the suburbs resulted in a flight of capital away from the central business districts, which was one reason of the fast urban degradation that was seen in the United States.

One potential solution to these issues was the establishment of mass transportation networks. However, during this time period, the federal government contributed to the problems by providing funding for the development of the Interstate Highway System, while at the same time funding for mass transit was being rapidly cut back. This led to a significant increase in traffic and congestion on the roads. The number of people using public transportation decreased significantly in most cities. In the same manner that the previous Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 had helped construct the Interstate Highways, the Urban Mass Transportation Authority (UMTA) was established to subsidize the development of mass transit systems. In other words, UMTA would contribute to the payment of the initial capital expenditures associated with the development of new infrastructure.

In spite of this, planners who were familiar with the PRT idea were concerned that constructing further systems based on already existing technology would not solve the situation, as Fitcher had said before. The proponents of these systems advocated for them to have the same degree of adaptability as an automobile:

Public transportation is in a deplorable condition for a very simple reason: the transit systems just do not provide a service that is appealing enough to coax people out of their cars and onto public transportation. As a result, a significant portion of their clientele consists of individuals who are unable to drive for one of three reasons: they are either too young, too elderly, or too economically disadvantaged to own and operate a motor vehicle. Take into consideration the situation from the point of view of a commuter who lives in a suburb but works in the central business center of the city (CBD). If he is planning to take public transportation, a typical scenario could look something like this: first, he will need to walk to the closest bus stop, which could take anywhere from five to ten minutes, and then he will need to wait for the bus, which could take anywhere from five to ten more minutes, possibly in inclement weather. When it comes, there is a possibility that he