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Dr J E Anderson comments below on the long anticipated Booz Allen report on PRT to the New Jersey State Legislature.
You can read the actual report here
The
report is an excellent summary. Paul
Hoffman has done a great job of fairly representing PRT in its potential place
in urban transportation. The NJDOT
shows PRT in a very positive light.
There is of course material left out that I would like to have seen, but
it will take a Historian of Technology some day to write
a book on the whole history of PRT.
I
have, however, some comments on three types of cost figures given:
1. Cost of a PRT test program needed before a
first application should be built.
2. PRT Capital cost
3. PRT O&M cost
On
the first, I don't know where the figure of $50 to $100 million came from. Of the experts listed, since Jack Irving and
Claus Becker are not included, I am the only one included who has actually done
all of the engineering needed to estimate such a cost, and I have designed and
supervised the construction of an automated,
LIM-propelled vehicle running on a 60-ft section of guideway all for a total
budget of less than $800,000, but based on extensive background
engineering.
Based
on that experience I have written a series of Requests for Proposal for the
guideway, chassis, cabin, control system, station, maintenance
facility, and test program in enough detail that I have been able to use that
information as a basis to interest companies in doing the details. If I direct
that work, which I am fully able to do, I estimate that I can supervise the
design, construction, and testing of a PRT system of three vehicles operating
on a loop test track capable of at least 35 mph for under $10 million and
completed in 30 months.
But
this is based on the caveat that I get the money no strings attached and can
direct the work. If this program is
done in New Jersey under the supervision of NJDOT a great deal of educating will
need to be done before final design and construction. Depending on how the program is run, this could take at least
six months and maybe a year and cost the salaries and overhead of the engineers
involved. Moreover if the NJDOT puts
the best systems engineer in the world in charge who has had little or no
experience with PRT the outcome will be as uncertain as was the outcome of the
Chicago-Raytheon project.
On
cost items 2 and 3 I only comment now that nothing is said in the report about
the dates when various estimates were made, which can't possibly all be
current, and the price indices used to bring them up to date. I will comment further after I have
researched price indices and have thus had a chance to make fair
comparisons. There are consumer price
indices, and various kinds of construction and material-cost price
indices. Engineering News Record
occasionally gives such indices but even then there are uncertainties, for
example, dependent on in what part of the world the various subsystems are manufactured.
Detailed
Comments
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The
four-to -one inflation of the costs of the Morgantown are mentioned twice
without pointing out why. Here is why:
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- The project started and the first cost
estimate was made assuming Alden StaRRcar's six passenger design with a
guideway of appropriate size and design for it.
- The deadline was set in December 1970
to get the system running in 20 months with a team that had never done anything
similar.
- UMTA arbitrarily increased the vehicle
size to 20 passengers.
- The project was done in such a hurry
that the guideway designer, F. R. Harris didn't know the weight of the vehicles
and was told to assume that they were as heavy as standard rapid rail
cars. That was the basis for the over-designed
guideway.
- The vehicle designer, Boeing, began
the vehicle design and only well into the program learned that the curve radii
were too small for their vehicle to negotiate, so they had to redesign the
vehicle with both back-wheel and front-wheel steering.
- F. R. Harris insisted that there be
borings at every post hole but to save money UMTA insisted that was not
necessary. A struggle followed which
was finally settled by UMTA giving F. R. Harris a letter accepting responsibility. The foundations, posts, and guideways were
built. Some of the foundations sank
enough so that they had to be removed at great expense, following which the
guideway had to be rebuilt
- These are only some of the problems,
which showed the results of the lack of systems engineering. What was not mentioned in the NJPRT report
was that at the start of the contract JPL was selected as the system
contractor. The program was initiated
in December 1970 and in August 1971 I visited JPL and was told that they had
just resigned from the program because they found that UMTA was using them only
as a money "pass-through" and that they were given no budget for systems
engineering. A JPL official told me
that they resigned from the program because they could not remain involved and
maintain their reputation for excellence in systems engineering. So 9 months into a 20-month program Boeing
took over as so-called systems engineer with no time to do any systems
engineering.
- Bottom line is that the ratio of the
finish to start costs of the Morgantown program should never be mentioned
without stating why the difference. In
one part of the NJPRT report there is thankfully some mention of these
problems.
- Option
#1: How can New Jersey monitor PRT programs if there is no budget at all? There would need to be a minimum of
assigning at least one person in the NJDOT to monitor the progress of PRT. Perhaps that is considered a negligible
budget, not worth mentioning.
- Page
23. The Scientific American article
mentioned was published in July 1969.
This is the date needed to find the article. It is an historic article and one I have often used as a first
introduction to PRT, thus the exact date is important.
- Page
23. The Apollo program stared with a
speech by Pres. Kennedy in 1960.
- Page
25. Cabtrack had a one-fifth scale test
track, not a full-scale track. Also
Aerospace Corporation
built a very useful one-tenth scale test track.
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Page
30. The target cost that came out of
the Phase I Chicago RTA PRT design study for the Rosemont, IL, 3-mile, 8
station PRT system was $13.4 million per mile.
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Page
47. The Cabintaxi program was stopped in Dec. 1980. I have the telegram.
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Page
55. PRT need not have lower line
speed. Line speed is an economic
factor, not technical.
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Page
93. In the Chicago RTA project, visual
impact was never mentioned as a problem.
This issue is brought up to my knowledge only by people promoting
surface level rail, always neglecting to show the overhead wires.
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Page
70. I like the conclusion that the
technology of PRT should be open, taught in schools, and practiced
by competent firms.
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Figure
A-18. This illustration is attributed
to Vectus, whereas it is a picture from a movie of the Taxi 2000 system serving
the Microsoft campus. See http://gettherefast.org/bettercampus.html.
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