The Third Martin Lowson Paper Award
presented at
The 2017 Podcar City Conference, Las Vegas, USA

The Martin Lowson Award, donated by the Lowson Family, encourages young researchers to perform high-quality research in the field of Automated Transit Systems (ATN). This (third) year the award was presented to Dr. Tatiana Babicheva. The 500$ award was presented by ATRA member Joerg Schweizer during the PodCar City conference this November in Las Vegas, USA. Her presentation entitled “Empty Vehicle Redistribution and fleet size in autonomous taxi systems” captured the interest of the audience. The many congratulations and vivid discussions after the presentation testified to the quality and relevance of her research. Hopefully the networking experience and warm reception will encourage her to continue working in the field of ATNs.

Tatiana Babicheva is researcher at VEDECOM, a French research institute with the mission to further individual, carbon-free and sustainable mobility. She received her PhD in 2016 at the Institute of Applied Mathematics named Keldysh in Moscow, Russia, in the field of mathematical modelling, numerical methods and program complexities. Her PhD theses has been dedicated to mathematical modelling of transportation systems. Dr. Babicheva is also head of the mathematical department at the Olympiad school, based in the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

by Robert Johnson

Automated passenger vehicles such as people movers at airports currently operate on exclusive guideways. In some systems, the guideway mechanically constrains the vehicles, while in others it is simply an ordinary road set aside for the exclusive use of the vehicles. Examples of the latter type include the Ultra system at London’s Heathrow airport and the 2getthere system at Masdar City, Abu Dhabi.

Because of recent advances in software and hardware, automated vehicles (AVs) will soon be able to operate in mixed traffic along with conventionally driven cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. At that point, costly infrastructure will be unnecessary and automated taxis and buses could use existing streets. However, even if an AV were capable of SAE Level 5 operation (automated operation in every situation a human driver could manage), there can still be significant benefits to providing it with an exclusive roadway. In many cases, it will be more cost effective to increase the capacity of a freeway or arterial by adding exclusive lanes for an AV system, rather than conventional lanes open to all vehicles.

The benefits include:

• Exclusive lanes for an AV system can be much narrower than conventional lanes. Less side clearance is needed because AVs can steer precisely, and if the vehicles were part of a fleet they could be uniformly narrow. For example, the Ultra vehicle needs a lane only 160 cm (5.3 ft) wide.

• Less than half as much vertical clearance is needed as for a conventional lane. Only about 2 meters of clearance (6.6 ft) should be adequate for vehicles with all seated passengers. This allows grade separation at greatly reduced cost. In areas of moderate density with a limited number of cross streets, the AV road could be mostly at grade and pass under cross streets in a structure similar to a pedestrian underpass. Pedestrians and cyclists could cross the AV road at points between cross streets by using small bridges. The AV road could drop to about 1 meter (3.3 ft) below grade under the bridge, thus allowing the bridge surface to be slightly more than 1 meter above grade.

• The support structure for elevated sections of an AV road would be much lighter and less expensive than for an equivalent length of conventional roadway, since the latter must be able to carry heavy trucks.

• Accidents caused by manually driven vehicles would be eliminated, greatly increasing safety and eliminating delays that even a minor accident can cause.

• Because of much lower local environmental impact, AV roads could be routed through areas where a conventional road would be unacceptable. Public opposition to new freeways and even arterials is well known. In particular, nearby residents object to noise and pollution from internal combustion engines. If the roadway were part of an AV system, residents could be assured that all vehicles would be electric, and there would be no noise from revving engines, honking horns, squealing tires, or large trucks.

Most of the benefits mentioned above are greatest for systems using narrow vehicles with all seated passengers. The same benefits are present, but to a lesser degree, for larger automated shuttles that accommodate standees, such as the 2getthere ParkShuttle and the EasyMile and Navya shuttles. These are higher and wider than Ultra vehicles, but can still use exclusive lanes that are narrower and have less vertical clearance than is required for conventional traffic.

by J. Edward Anderson, first ATRA President.

1983 – The Eighth Year.

 ATRA began the year with a balance of $26,158.54, which was sufficient to begin planning a series of workshops, the purpose of which was to identify key issues whose lack of adequate attention and/or resolution had been blocking advanced transit development and deployment for a long time. It was clear from the discussions that the lack of more service-effective and more cost-effective options to meet the transportation needs of the huge low-density parts of most of the world’s metropolitan areas was a growing source of frustration for transit planners and people needing transportation. The lack of proven alternatives was causing many transportation needs to be left unmet or is leaving the field open to people compelled to back the start or expansion of heavy rail systems. The latter course is being taken in several metropolitan areas even though such systems are extremely costly, time-consuming and disruptive to build, expensive to operate, and cannot, by their nature and characteristics, be deployed widely to meet the daily trip needs of most of the people of these metropolitan areas. Moreover, such systems, if pressed, would place great financial demands upon their communities for many decades ahead and preempt available resources that might have been used to try other ideas. Their installation also discouraged innovation in another way: Heavy rail systems involved the creation of huge capital investments and often bonded indebtedness for stations, guideways, and equipment that could not be lightly written off in favor of new and more effective methods of transit.

As if to emphasize ATRA concern, Miami proceeded to build its hugely expensive Downtown Component of its Metrorail system (DCM), shown below, with ground breaking ceremonies on August 31. It was the first application of an automated rubber-tired system in a downtown environment in the nation, and was the first such system to interface with a more traditional rapid transit system. The DCM was to transport 3000 passengers per hour on each loop of the 1.9-mile double-loop system. The entire system is above ground. The vehicles have a maximum capacity of 155 passengers and operate at a maximum speed of 30 mph.

A World Conference on Transportation Research was held in Hamburg, Germany on April 25-29 under the theme “Research for Transportation Policies in a Changing World.”

A French designed accelerating moving walkway (TRAX) was undegoing pre-site assembly at the licensee factory in Nantes, France. TRAX was the only system chosen for the third phase of the U. S. Accelerating Moving Walkway System Program. This phase consisted of full-scale testing to determine its acceptability for all passengers, including children, aged and handicapped.

In June of 1983, with the assistance of the Dean of the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology and the Assistant Vice President for Technology Transfer, a company we called “Automated Transportation Systems, Inc.” was established to commercialize the PRT system I was developing. The founding Board of Directors is shown here. Dick Gehring was elected President and CEO. The four members other than me each invested $40,000, which enabled me, with my two graduate students, to work on the project for the following year. In September the investment firm Dain Bosworth agreed to manage our offering in discussions with potential investors. Before the end of that month we held investment meetings with several possible individual investors as well as with companies we thought would be interested. We also contacted state agencies and the Governor’s office, as well as members of the Minnesota Congressional Delegation.