MASDAR MIST delays impact PRT schedule.

[Peter Muller]

MIST delays impact PRT schedule. At a sustainability conference in
Colorado Springs on November 3, 2009, Nancy Tuor, CH2M Hill’s program
manager for the MASDAR ‘Green City’ in the United Arab Emirates,
announced that the personal rapid transit (PRT) system will open to
public use in about six months. The originally scheduled 2009 opening
has been delayed because completion of the Masdar Institute of Science
and Technology (MIST), the primary facility to be served by the
initial system, has been delayed. MIST construction was scheduled to
already be complete.

[Brad Templeton]

Is there a good source for actual photos and on-the-ground reports on
the Masdar system? All I see in searches continues to be the
artist's renderings and the one sample pod car/cybercar that they
showed at a trade show. Surely if they are opening in six months
there must be a lot of actual photos by now somewhere?

The design is unusual, since they are building the city from scratch,
in that they are putting all the buildings on the ground but elevating
the (largely pedestrian) streets above the ground. The cars will run
on the ground, but this will be viewed as the basement level of the
buildings. So the elevated guideways are for the people.

[Mr_Grant]

Depictions of elevated guideway were only conceptual. Subsequently the
decision was made to go underground for people and freight PRT.

See
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/moggeprtpaper.pdf

[Jerry Roane]

Brad

Disneyworld is the same way.  The lower level is for all the uglies and the "ground" level is for the park guests.  I am fine with either putting the uglies on the bottom or on the top as long as the guests (citizens) get their own safe layer.  Taking the concept further our grid adds two basements or two elevated layers of ugly layers that do not have to battle it out with bumpers into door side posts.  Masdar should have included a series of overpasses in the underground or two levels so there would never be traffic but Masdar is quite small compared to a city but large compared to a mega-mall.  High speed and no cross traffic on the ugly layer/layers shows up when it goes to a real city from a start-up city.  When the maintenance guy hops on his golf cart to go fix something he is going to have to deal with all the automated controlled traffic and that will be an issue for him.  If each guideway segment is departmentalized and two layers going directions approximately 90 degrees from each other then a repair will be easier and thus quicker.  If all ugly stuff is on one plane it is better but not as good as it could be. 

Jerry Roane 

[Brad Templeton]

I understand the Masdar design. It's just that for something that
was meant to open now and is now pushed to 6 months away, there is
remarkably little about it in the form of real pictures, under-
construction shots, finalized design diagrams etc.

It's the biggest thing in PRT ever, and can also be viewed as an early
robocar project, but there is so little to be found.

Anybody got pictures or other info? Being at-grade, will there be at-
grade intersections? What system will manage the intersections? Is
it cybercar style following lines on the road or embedded magnets?
Does it sometimes go into elevated guideway?

[Peter Muller]

Brad, on our website, www.prtconsulting.com you can go to Media/PRT
Galleries/2getthere to see some photos. The ones at the top are a
vehicle that was put on display. The one at bottom right is a
production vehicle. The 2getthere system follows buried magnets. The
Masdar client is very secretive and I can't tell you more.
Peter.

[Jerry Schneider]

At 02:19 PM 11/5/2009, you wrote:

>I understand the Masdar design. It's just that for something that
>was meant to open now and is now pushed to 6 months away, there is
>remarkably little about it in the form of real pictures, under-
>construction shots, finalized design diagrams etc.
>
>It's the biggest thing in PRT ever, and can also be viewed as an early
>robocar project, but there is so little to be found.
>
>Anybody got pictures or other info? Being at-grade, will there be at-
>grade intersections? What system will manage the intersections? Is
>it cybercar style following lines on the road or embedded magnets?
>Does it sometimes go into elevated guideway?

My experience has been that the UAE people running the show are extremely
secretive about the project - for what reasons, I don't know. I think they have
probably muzzled their consultants or severely limited what they can say about
the project, at least without their prior review. Another PRT company
did some work
for someone in the Gulf area a few years ago and they have been able to say
almost nothing about it, even now.

You might find something of interest at:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/Masdar.htm

[Brad Templeton]

Clearly. I mean how have they avoided people taking photos of the
construction efforts or their tests? Can nobody get close to the
Masdar construction site? Has nobody gone in there illicitly with a
small camera?

It is rather odd. For LHR, we have as I would expect, demo videos of
the system in test mode. For Masdar, nothing?

On Nov 5, 4:39 pm, Peter Muller <pmul...@prtconsulting.com> wrote:
> Brad, on our website,www.prtconsulting.comyou can go to Media/PRT

[Robbert Lohmann]

Gents,

I understand your impatience and wanting to see something, but you'll
have to understand that it is Masdar as customer that determines the
marketing strategy with regard to the project and the PRT concept as
integral part of it. As such 2getthere respects and co-operates with
Masdar to fulfill the strategy as set out.

For a short description on the project, please refer to
http://www.2getthere.eu/Personal_Transit/Projects/Masdar_City_PRT/
(including a picture on our test site of the production vehicle).

Robbert

[Kirston Henderson]

on 11/5/09 6:42 PM, Jerry Schneider at j...@peak.org wrote:

> My experience has been that the UAE people running the show are extremely
> secretive about the project - for what reasons, I don't know. I think they
> have
> probably muzzled their consultants or severely limited what they can say about
> the project, at least without their prior review. Another PRT company
> did some work
> for someone in the Gulf area a few years ago and they have been able to say
> almost nothing about it, even now.
>

It may be that if it proves to be a complete failure, they will have
less egg on their faces.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Brad Templeton]

So still not much, though there was some stuff in there I did not
know. Based on the scale of the eventual project I had presumed the
startup would be bigger than 2 passenger stations on a 1.2km track and
10 PRT pods. So alas, a smaller demonstration than LHR, though the
freight system, though harder to see, may get some attention. PRT for
freight got a bit of a bad rep from the Denver airport problems, which
I suspect were largely the fault of the engineers and management, not
the task.

On Nov 6, 4:36 am, Robbert Lohmann <robb...@2getthere.eu> wrote:
> Gents,
>
> I understand your impatience and wanting to see something, but you'll
> have to understand that it is Masdar as customer that determines the
> marketing strategy with regard to the project and the PRT concept as
> integral part of it. As such 2getthere respects and co-operates with
> Masdar to fulfill the strategy as set out.
>

> For a short description on the project, please refer tohttp://www.2getthere.eu/Personal_Transit/Projects/Masdar_City_PRT/

[Dennis Manning]

No. The Denver fiasco was the fault of politicians rushing the project to
make themselves look good while still in office. It was similar to why
Morgantown was botched relative to what it could have been. The engineers
and management knew the techology wasn't ready.

Dennis

[Brad Templeton]

I've seen many arguments blaming every party they can blame. BAE did
admit they were wrong in estimating the time to build the system.
However, the final result is that people concluded that when a team --
politicians, management or engineers -- promises a system that can
move large numbers of cars from point to point on a multi-line rail
network, their assurances can't readily be trusted. Other teams will
not make the same mistakes but so many mistakes were made that it
raised skepticism, fairly or not, of all future efforts.

On Nov 6, 12:47 pm, "Dennis Manning" <john.manni...@comcast.net>
wrote:

[Mr_Grant]

The PRT network can only be as large as the amount of sublevel
available, and MIST is the only building that has been started as far
as I know. The PV farm was built first, but it has no sublevel.

[Mr_Grant]

The photo with the two folks in hard hats -- was that taken in the
MIST undercroft?

On Nov 5, 4:39 pm, Peter Muller <pmul...@prtconsulting.com> wrote:
> Brad, on our website,www.prtconsulting.comyou can go to Media/PRT

[Dennis Manning]

What is BAE?

Agree that failed systems set back all efforts for new transit systems.

[Mr_Grant]

Wasn't BAE the designer of the Denver baggage system?