Personal Rapid Transit in New Zealand - Future Transit Now

A system consists of a variety of components that work together to accomplish a specific purpose.  Each type of component in the system has an acquisition cost that increases with its reliability, i.e. the greater the reliability required of a component the more one will have to pay for it.  With increased reliability, the component will not have to be serviced or replaced as often, so the cost of its support decreases with reliability.   The sum of the amortized acquisition cost, i.e., the annual payment for the component, and the annual support cost is the life-cycle cost (LCC).  Since the former increases with reliability and the later decreases with reliability the LCC plotted as the ordinate against reliability as the abscissa is a curve with a single minimum point. 

Generally applicable formulae for the gain constants in a proportional plus integral controller required for stable control of the speed of any vehicle in terms of natural frequency, damping ratio, vehicle mass, and thruster time constant are derived. An example, based on a simulation of the controller and vehicle, is given. The theory shows that only speed and position feedback are needed. Acceleration feedback is unnecessary.

Magnetic levitation or maglev is an alternative approach to vehicle suspension. Instead of wheels, magnetic force is employed to counteract gravity. Maglev is particularly useful at high speeds when wheels must resist very high centrifugal forces. Ride quality, durability, and safety then require high precision in wheel and track manufacture, installation, and maintenance. At issue is the need for this more complex, energy consuming, and expensive approach in lower speed applications.

Notwithstanding growing recognition that PRT is technologically feasible, a persistent question remains about its capacity to carry the necessary passenger loads.

The obvious importance of capacity to transit planning requires that the capacity capabilities of PRT be illuminated.

While the Advanced Transit Association (ATRA) does not sponsor any particular form of advanced transit, its members recognize the critical need for communities to have better options than now exist for meeting mobility needs in far-flung, traffic-congested, and increasingly environmentally sensitive metropolitan areas.

The author was invited to speak at North Park College as the 1994 Distinguished Alumnus Lecturer on his role in the development of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), the first genu­inely new urban transportation system to ap­pear in a century.  This Chapel Lecture de­scribes his relevant technical experience, his search for meaning, his need for interdisciplin­ary project work, and the extraordinary circum­stances and timing that led him to PRT as a new career and that carried this work to the point where it has been taken over by a major corporation and a major urban transportation authority.  The lecture ends with a challenge to young people to aim high and seek a noble cause of fundamental importance to mankind.