Personal Rapid Transit in New Zealand - Future Transit Now

A complete list of publications on PRT by JE Anderson Ph.D., P.E.

The Intelligent Transportation Network System (ITNS) is a totally new form of public transportation designed to provide a high level of service safely and reliably over an urban area of any extent in all reasonable weather conditions without the need for a driver’s license, and in a way that minimizes cost, energy use, material use, land use, and noise. Being electrically operated it does not emit carbon dioxide or any other air pollutant.

This remarkable set of attributes is achieved by operating vehicles automatically on a network of minimum weight, minimum size exclusive guideways, by stopping only at off-line stations, and by using light-weight, sub-compact-auto-sized vehicles.

With these physical characteristics and in-vehicle switching ITNS is much more closely comparable to an expressway on which automated automobiles would operate than to conventional buses or trains with their on-line stopping and large vehicles.  We now call this new system ITNS rather than High-Capacity Personal Rapid Transit, which is a designation coined over 35 years ago.

The paper reviews the evolution of the PRT concept from its modern beginning in 1953.  The early inventors, the projects, and the response of government are discussed.  PRT activity diminished to almost nothing by 1980, but then revived strongly as a result of activity by the Northeastern Illinois Regional Transportation Authority.  Their interest ignited enthusiastic activity on a growing front to the point that today one can truly say that the concept is coming of age

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.