WorkShop Cancelled
The one-day workshop on mobility markets and opportunities at airport landside development, organized by ATRA for March 22 has been cancelled.
Latest News
This is a round up of the latest news related Personal Rapid Tramsport and Advanced Transport. If you would like to submit a news item please email news@atra.org
World’s largest urban PRT system announced
The Punjab Government has awarded a contract for the world’s first urban Personal Rapid Transport (PRT) system in Amritsar, India to Ultra Fairwood.
At peak capacity the PRT system can carry up to 100,000 passengers a day on a 3.3km elevated guideway in over 200 specialist vehicles between seven stations, making it the world’s largest PRT system to date.
Financed entirely by private funding on a build, own, operate transfer (BOOT) basis, the passenger services will go live in 2014.
ULTra Perfomance Report
The Ultra system at Heathrow’s Terminal 5 opened on the 18th April 2011 and at the end of November had operated for a total of 4,595 hours, carrying over 200,000 passengers, with high availability, reliability and minimal waiting times. Usage of the car park served by the pods has grown steadily since the service was introduced, and we recently recorded our busiest day so far (1020 occupied vehicle journeys on Monday 28th November).
Read more here.
Masdar Year 1
On November 27th the first year of Operations and Maintenance of the PRT system at Masdar City was concluded. Over the year the system carried over 230.000 passengers, including VIPs such as His Highness General Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi), Mr. Ban Ki Moon (Secretary-General United Nations), Queen Noor (Jordan), Prince Albert (Monaco) and Prinses Victoria (Sweden).
For the full data, link to the 2getthere website.
Morgantown Tour
Morgantown won a PRT design contest in 1968 and received a large federal grant to complete the project. Despite being very popular with the students of the town, who depend on it to get to classes, the Morgantown PRT has been virtually ignored by the media in recent years, explaining why it is completely absent from the public discussion of how to create more mass transit to relieve our congested roadways.
The above is quoted from the video posted on youtube showing off the Morgantown application.
Allan Gregory
Interview with Allan Gregory, Surface Access Director at Heathrow Airport. “Many people are often surprised that BAA is a supporter of rail, we see air and rail as being complementary to each other and over the last ten years BAA invested over £715 million in Heathrow Express and other rail developments.” Watch the video to see which rail links are coming to Heathrow Airport and why BAA took part in the pioneering personal rapid transit scheme.
Masdar Analysis
Simulation-based analysis of Personal Rapid Transit System in Masdar City. For this thesis an interim but critical stage of the network phasing was chosen for simulation, as it includes the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, a 4 star hotel, residential areas with community centers, a Convention Center and the Masdar Initiative Headquarters.
The Jetson Jetset
The Jetson jetset: Heathrow’s Personal Rapid Transit pods. Jumbo jets pass narrowly overhead and there’s gridlock on the road below as my white, plastic pod progresses along a narrow viaduct through the knotted infrastructure around Heathrow airport. This is the future we were supposed to have had…
Podcar Conference Stockholm
During the recent Podcar Conference the industry gathered to discuss the recent developments and progress. Over the three days there were multiple presentations on both the systems in realization and operation as well as new concepts being developed.
How to Build a Greener City
The Wall Street Journal includes Personal Rapid Transit as part of the Green City of the future. “There’s going to have to be new forms of energy, new ways of delivering energy and new forms of infrastructure,” says Warren Karlenzig, president of Common Current, a consulting firm on sustainable cities based in San Anselmo, Calif. “All this will be necessary to allow cities to operate the way they do now.”