|
|
ATRA envisions a
future when trans-
portation will all be
orchestrated for the
convenience of people
and their businesses
– as well as for the
benefit of our planet.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Foreword of "Personal Rapid Transit III" (1975) From the proceedings of
the PRT III conference held September 16th-19th 1975
Denver, Colorado
By Dennis A. Gary (1), University of
Colorado, Boulder, Colorado
The need for public transportation is a
longstanding, well-documented, and easily observed fact. The
automobile, born out of the industrial revolution, provides a mobile
and highly individualistic means of transportation. However, the cost
of acquiring, maintaining, and operating an automobile and the need
for special training in order to drive it have always precluded its
use by a large portion of any population. Often called the .transit
handicapped,. this group of people includes the young, the old, the
poor, the physically handicapped, and the timid. Furthermore, like
any new technology, the automobile produced second-order consequences
which were not easily foreseeable in the early years of this century.
While some of these unforeseen effects have been regarded as
beneficial, as for instance the creation of the automobile,
petroleum, and highway industries and their contribution to the
economic development of the world, other consequences have been very
detrimental to the overall quality of life, particularly in cities.
These detrimental consequences include air, noise, visual, and water
runoff(2) pollution, death and disability to passengers and
pedestrians, and extensive land use for roads and parking lots.
It is not the intent of this book to
trace the history of the automobile or the problems that it has
created. Rather, the primary purpose of this book is to document some
of the more significant progress which has been made toward the
development of a new form of urban transportation, personal rapid
transit (PRT).
First and foremost, it is necessary to
state clearly that there currently are no urban deployed PRT systems
in operation or under construction anywhere in the world. This fact
has given rise to the criticism of PRT because it has goals which are
as yet unfulfilled. Yet, it is the precise nature of these goals
which has allowed PRT to be a major departure from existing transit
thinking and which portends the arrival of a whole new age in urban
transit. Let us therefore look briefly at these goals from a
philosophical standpoint.
All forms of current transit hardware
have been the outgrowth of the application of an existing or
developing technology to the urban transportation problem. By taking
the electric motor and the steel wheel . rail concepts and
integrating them into a working system, the streetcar and subway were
born.(3) Similarly, the internal combustion engine led to the
automobile and the bus. PRT is no different in this respect. Now that
man has ventured into the realm of automated control, computers, and
a wide variety of space-age materials and processes, it is only
natural that this wealth of new technology should give birth to an
urban transportation application which updates the existing transit
concepts.
Thus, just as the railroad, automobile,
streetcar, and airplane were all once the dreams of imaginative men,
so too can PRT be thought of as a goal toward which scientists and
engineers are working. But while PRT does represent another step in
the inevitable march of technology, the environment in which it has
been conceived and is being born differs markedly in at least two
respects from the environment of other transit concepts which are in
operation today.
First, there is a greater breadth of
technology to apply to the problem. PRT is not encumbered by the
existing state of the art of a limited field of technology, nor by
the parochial interests of specific industries or groups. Instead, it
represents the challenge of a particular problem which is open to be
solved by the most clever and ingenious solution that can be
conceived by the inventive minds of the world. Only the results to be
achieved by PRT are well defined. The methods or hardware needed to
realize these goals are not. For example, PRT test vehicles have been
built with suspension systems based on rubber tires, air cushions,
and magnetic levitation; they have been propelled by conventional
rotating electric motors, linear electric motors, and air pressure;
they have been suspended from overhead guideways and supported by
guideways below the vehicle.
The second major difference between the
philosophical origins of PRT and those of other modes of transit is
that a new, higher priority motivates the concept of PRT. It is a
priority which transcends the comparatively mundane task of applying
new technology to an existing problem: PRT is a conceptualization of
an ideal urban transit system. It is an outgrowth of a systematic
approach to solving a massive complex problem. In contrast, other
transit systems appear to be compromises or interim solutions which
were born by selectively ignoring parts of the urban transportation
problem. This approach was necessitated by the limits of existing
technology at the time of the creation of earlier transit systems.
Now, however, the technology appears to be offering hope for a near
ultimate in transit. Concerned people all over the globe have put the
needs of our cities first and are now working toward the technical
realization of these needs. That realization is PRT. As a result of
this motivation arising more from need than from practical
application, PRT offers a potential for making a significant
improvement in the quality of urban life. Other .solutions. To the
urban transportation problem have been incremental, at best. Improved
vehicle designs, bus lanes, para-transit operations (dial-a-ride,
taxi, jitney, van pools, car pools, etc.) all attempt to provide a
few more passengers per gallon of fuel or per acre of right-of-way,
or to offer a more frequent service, or a pick-up and delivery which
are closer to door-to-door service. All of them, however, involve
trade-offs among various service and operational characteristics.
These trade-offs can be taken only so far before the need for a
quantum jump forward in urban transportation hardware becomes
evident. PRT is meant to be that quantum jump. As such, its evolution
may be expected to parallel the development of the automobile from a
curiosity in the early years of this century to a major chapter of
our whole urban way of life only fifty years later.
These are the philosophical goals of
PRT. They are challenging goals which require a combination of
concern for the welfare of urban dwellers and a confidence in man's
ability to confront technical problems and solve them. It is very
easy to become so involved in the further refinement of the existing
internal combustion highway system that the goals of PRT will appear
to be too futuristic. The papers presented in this book will serve to
prove the imminent applicability of hardware systems which are very
close to the pure form of PRT, and the fact that the deployment of
true PRT hardware is well within the capability of this generation.
In a few years the goals of PRT may become the norm of cities.
Notes:
(1) As of 2005, Dennis Gary is with
EarthTech, Chicago, IL.
(2) Streets form a natural collector
for many automobile wastes, such as broken parts, worn rubber, and
petroleum drippings. The soluble and easily washed of these wastes
are carried by precipitation into the storm sewer systems. This
run-off is often discharged into local rivers and streams with little
or no processing and is thus a source of pollution.
(3) More recently, these systems have
been updated by modern technologies and renamed light rail transit
(LRT) and conventional rapid transit (CRT) respectively.
DOCUMENT# 1135
|
|