PRT as a Feeder To LRT

[Jack Slade]

I would jump at the chance to use PRT as a feeder line for LRT, Trains, or streetcars. It would be a good place to make a first start. There is just one thing that I am not sure of:   I wonder how long it would take an average rider to wonder " why can I go 3 miles at 45Mph with no stops to get on another system that averages 20Mph and stops at all stations?"   The LRT people would not like that, would they?   Jack Slade

[Dennis Manning]

Jack:

 

I agree but for the present I think the lowest hanging fruit is PRT versus the ghastly expensive APMs at airports. It's why San Jose turned away from an APM. Hopefully Oakland will turn away from the $500m 3 station 3.5 mile BART to airport connector in a similar manor.  

 

In the meantime we talk about boosting LRT by being a connector largely to soften LRT objections to PRT. This is happening in San Jose as the LRT people see PRT as a viable way to connect LRT to the airport with PRT thereby boosting LRT ridership. I think PRT will eventually cream all the LRT systems.

 

In the meantime best to present PRT as a boost for LRT which it will in the short term.

 

Dennis

[Walter Brewer]

What do you consider the minimum LRT trip distance where this arrangement is desirable?

 

 Walt Brewer

[Walter Brewer]

Right on! I should have added the speed factor to my LRT distance question.

 

 Walt Brewer

----- Original Message -----

From: Jack Slade

To: Transport Line

Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 2:18 AM

Subject: [t-i] PRT as a Feeder To LRT

[Dennis Manning]

Not sure I understand your question. LRT stations generally have closer spacing in downtown cores perhaps as low as a half mile but usually more than a mile or more. 

[Walter Brewer]

Jack S is making the same point. If there is a superior,(read PRT), system why transfer to LRT except where travel distances may limit, or need a different kind of PRT?

 

Regarding your earlier. It's sort of a self fulfilling prophesy. Suppose as many incentives were provided for bus routes?

[Mr_Grant]

Why transfer to LRT? Because where an LRT system already exists,
planners are going to integrate PRT into that existing network.

[Jerry Roane]

Jack

Any of us would jump at any chance of course but the sales business is different from how it will play out.  Imagine your the mayor and you used up all your political capital to get a light duty rail line built in your city.  The initial federal money landfall has already gone through and the migrant import labor to build the track has left the city.  Now you have this monument to your political career sitting there with no customers.  Your best hope is to fill that puppy up by screwing up all the stop lights along its path and never building another lane of roadway along its path.  This is congestion-by-plan (CBP).  Now Jack Slade comes along and says I can feed your light duty rail line with my cool low energy low polluting elevated guideway system.  That is all cool till it goes into operation with a network covering the exact same area as the light duty choo choo.  When a customer sits in your vehicle seat he will say I want to go to X and the guideway network takes him there.  It will be that everyone will be going where they WANT to go and that will leave the light duty choo choo empty.  This will not stand if the politician who got the thing built or even his remaining party has anything to do about it so for the same reason they intentionally screw the public by screwing up the roads and stop lights (emphasis on stop) to form congestion to force the light duty thingie.  They will have you re-route your cars to not go along the path of the light duty heavy polluting empty thingie causing people riding your system to go way out of their way to avoid the area of the TOD so they can get to work or to the grocery store or school etc.  Lucky for you politicians rarely think past step one to step two.  If your politician can add two and two you will be out, because your good service would negate his political capital poor service.

Jerry Roane

[Dennis Manning]

Walt:

 

It's probably because the LRT is already in place and not likely to be abandoned any time soon.

 

The SJ airport may be where we see this LRT/PRT connection first played out. The Valley Transit Authority (VTA) that runs the LRT system is desperate to raise ridership. That's why they have given some funds, albeit a modest amount, to move forward with the planning of the airport PRT. Where this will come to a head is whether the VTA will fund the whole airport PRT or not. When the $650m APM was on the table the VTA had about $300m from the tax measure passed  in 2000 to help fund the APM. Theoretically the VTA still has control of the $300m. It gets murky because in the mean time it's possible those funds could be siphoned off for some unrelated project. Assuming enough funds remain under VTA control they will make the call on funding PRT.

 

This isn't a slam dunk. As much  as the VTA wants to increase it's ridership it in fact may see PRT as a threat. It's not too difficult to see the VTA come under pressure from outside LRT interests to not support PRT.

 

Dennis

 

PS - The reason PRT won't be taking the place of existing LRT systems any time soon is because as I understand it abandoning an LRT system means the Federal funds used to build it would have to be returned. 

[Brad Templeton]

VTA ridership is one of the worst in the USA. The LRT in San Jose,
which uses 7,000 BTUs/passenger mile (twice that of the average car)
just does not have stations in places people live or want to go to.

There is currently a bus shuttle to the LRT (and commuter rail) which
are found on either side of the airport. It comes about every 10
minutes and is free. Now the PRT would not have the 10 minute wait
time, and have a shorter trip time, but then it would take you to the
LRT that few people ride. It might be useful for a trip downtown on
the LRT, but I don't know how any other trips. As a plus, while
SJC used to be one of the simplest easy-in easy-out airports around,
they have destroyed all that in a needless expansion, and since it's
now harder to get in there with cars, people might consider the PRT to
a few local companies or downtown.

[Jerry Roane]

Dennis

Our proposal to them prompted by their request for letters of interest bypassed the light rail completely.  We proposed to go south from the exit side of the runway to the central convention/business district and then continued on to the Coyote Valley Power Plant where we would pick up waste heat to heat and cool the airport facilities.  It was out of the way to go around the end of the airport to get to the transit station they initially suggested this link to.  By linking the new system with the heart of the city's transit system in the CBD we avoided another transfer for just about any trip from the airport.  Obviously this is just a suggestion but we shatter the proposed budget amount even with this much expanded service and provide a fast direct ride to the center of activity where they could get back out to the transit station on the opposite side of the airport if needed. 

Jerry Roane

[Dennis Manning]

Brad:

 

It's pretty clear that SJDOT has ambitions to expand beyond the airport environs. This is goal statement from  recent RFP:

 

The goal of the San Jose’s Automated Transit Network Project is to develop and build an
ATN within and immediately outside of the San Jose Airport that: 1) demonstrates the
feasibility and networkability of this technology; 2) provides a fixed transit connection
between the Airport and the Caltrain/future BART station and North First Street Light
Rail line; 3) creates the technological, design, economic and policy framework that will
facilitate the future expansion of the ATN system as well as construction of similar
projects elsewhere in the nation; and; 4) launches a new green tech industry in the
United States.

[Brad Templeton]

Indeed. But the failings of the VTA transit system can't all be
visited on the VTA. The truth is that San Jose is a poor bed for
transit. The economy of the valley is highly sprawled, with mostly
low density housing and various urban clusters far apart. The land
values are the highest to be found, the population wealthy and all
owning cars. The main thing it has going for it is the population is
innovation-hungry and tech friendly.

Now it does turn out that there is already a bike route from SJC to
near downtown, so it would be easy to get permission to run PRT
guideways along the river floodway, so if you wanted to link the
airport and downtown you could do it -- it's also not very far --
under 3 miles which is unusual for today's cities.

But make no mistake, you would be primarily linking the downtown,
airport and sections of the airport business district. The airport
business district is also quite sprawled and would need a lot of
stations to cover it. With a bit more track you also get Santa
Clara University and "downtown" Santa Clara, and San Jose State, where
the student populations are more transit-ready. The attempt to put
lots of condos in downtown SJ is not doing well, however.

Impossible? No, but not a good first choice demonstration project.
You could run track to some residential areas, but you would need to
also run track to places they want to go other than downtown. SJ's
downtown is not dead, but it's not vibrant either.

I don't know why the LRT never went to the airport, it would have
gotten a lot more use if it did, as there is a fair bit of traffic
from the airport to the convention center.

There are plans to extend BART to the Santa Clara caltrain stop, which
would need some sort of people mover to get to the airport terminals.
This train stop is quite close to the airport but is on the other side
of the airfield from the terminals. As such, it's actually a long
way from the terminals on the surface.



On Nov 5, 10:54 am, "Dennis Manning" <john.manni...@comcast.net>
wrote:

[Walter Brewer]

"I don't know why the LRT never went to the airport, it would have
gotten a lot more use if it did, as there is a fair bit of traffic
from the airport to the convention center."

The reason at LAX was taxi and van service, and parking operators lobbies.

Regarding characteristics of bus riders and LRT riders, I remember from way
back some San Diego data after a survey. May have not separated the two
modes, but I'll look for it.

One recollection was that only 1/4 were "choice" riders who owned or had
access to cars.

[Walter Brewer]

Yes I understand the marketing.

[Dennis Manning]

It may be a poor location for LRT but an excellent one for PRT because as I
mentioned before PRT doesn't require nearly as much density as LRT.

[Michael Weidler]

I've been trying to figure out what is the point of installing PRT at this location. Are there really that many people getting off of CalTrain and using the #10 bus to get to the airport? I have been looking over the area around the airport in all directions using Google maps. Google now has many companies labeled on the maps, so it is possible to see roughly what is in a particular area. I don't see anything which would be a significant draw to locals regardless of which direction the PRT runs. I also do not see a whole lot (other than hotels) which are likely to interest a significant number of airport users. Am I missing something? --- On Thu, 11/5/09, Dennis Manning <john.m...@comcast.net> wrote:

[Brad Templeton]

PRT may not require as much density as LRT, but both suffer the lower
the density. If you want a place for your first big PRT success, San
Jose is not it. That the LRT does absolutely terribly, among the
worst in the world, should be one clue. That may make it a place for
PRT to save once PRT is established, I suppose. But can any transit
save a low density, highly wealthy area?

All transit has a critical mass problem. Until you can blanket an
entire area, your system, PRT or otherwise, will only serve the areas
where demand will be highest, starting small and growing if it shows
success. But that success is hard, because the PRT only serves
trips from one location that has the PRT to another location that has
it. In a fully sprawled town, where trips are effectively random,
that's almost impossible to solve as covering 10% of the area would
get you 1% of the trips. Nothing is that sprawled, most areas have
downtowns and other concentrator areas which can bump that
number. Silicon Valley is not one of those areas. The corporate
campuses are spread far apart, with huge parking lots around them. To
serve companies you need to put one station per company in the
industrial park areas. There is very little high density housing to
put stations at, and running elevated guideways down anything but the
major streets will be a big NIMFY problem.

If you don't handle most of a person's trips, they will buy a car.
Once they have a car, they consider only the incremental cost of a car
trip, not the full cost including depreciation and insurance. So
they will not even use the transit when it goes from their house to
their destination in some cases.

Outside of the downtowns and the airport, parking is free in Silicon
Valley, which is another transit killer.

[Jerry Roane]

Michael

You are dead on.  There is scant travel along this path today and on the conference call this afternoon that was mentioned in passing.  The bus ride is "free" so any chance of a public private partnership competing against "free" is gone.  The value of the system is not this starting arrangement but the fully blossomed city-wide network that could grow out of this start.

I was actually very excited to hear how the city wants out of the box thinking and they want green etc.  It was repeated many times during the meeting.  The purpose of this next stage is to address this exact concern of growing a network from nothing.  This will be one of the jobs of this consultant hire. 

Jerry Roane

[Dennis Manning]

You may not think SJ is the best place for PRT but it currently has the best
shot at getting a toehold. Time will tell about it's ability to spread
throughout the area.

[Michael Weidler]

The city bus is free? Or is there an additional shuttle bus? --- On Thu, 11/5/09, Jerry Roane <jerry...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Brad Templeton]

There is a free bus, run by the transit authority (their other buses
are $2) which runs between the LRT station, the airport terminals, and
the Santa Clara Caltrain (commuter rail) station on the other side of
the airport. The Caltrain station also handles another rush hour
only commuter rail, and the plan, probably a very long time away, is
for BART to run there. Who knows, if there were a successful PRT
downtown you could convince them not to spend a at least half a
billion bringing BART from downtown to the Santa Clara Caltrain
station. Yes, half a billion. That might well be the way to pitch
this to them, build a major PRT network with the savings from not
doing that last leg for BART. Even more since once BART goes there,
they will need a people mover of some sort, the existing bus is not
enough.

Of course, when BART will come depends on a lot of things, federal
money, more local money. Voters voted for it but downturn came

On Nov 5, 4:29 pm, Michael Weidler <pstran...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> The city bus is free? Or is there an additional shuttle bus?
>

> --- On Thu, 11/5/09, Jerry Roane <jerry.ro...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> From: Jerry Roane <jerry.ro...@gmail.com>
> Subject: [t-i] Re: San Jose PRT
> To: transport-...@googlegroups.com
> Date: Thursday, November 5, 2009, 3:26 PM
>
> Michael
>
> You are dead on.  There is scant travel along this path today and on the conference call this afternoon that was mentioned in passing.  The bus ride is "free" so any chance of a public private partnership competing against "free" is gone.  The value of the system is not this starting arrangement but the fully blossomed city-wide network that could grow out of this start.
>
> I was actually very excited to hear how the city wants out of the box thinking and they want green etc.  It was repeated many times during the meeting.  The purpose of this next stage is to address this exact concern of growing a network from nothing.  This will be one of the jobs of this consultant hire. 
>
> Jerry Roane
>

> On Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:36 PM, Michael Weidler <pstran...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I've been trying to figure out what is the point of installing PRT at this location. Are there really that many people getting off of CalTrain and using the #10 bus to get to the airport?
>
> I have been looking over the area around the airport in all directions using Google maps. Google now has many companies labeled on the maps, so it is possible to see roughly what is in a particular area. I don't see anything which would be a significant draw to locals regardless of which direction the PRT runs. I also do not see a whole lot (other than hotels) which are likely to interest a significant number of airport users.
>
> Am I missing something?
>

> --- On Thu, 11/5/09, Dennis Manning <john.manni...@comcast.net> wrote:

[Jerry Schneider]

At 02:36 PM 11/5/2009, Michael W. wrote:
>I've been trying to figure out what is the point of installing PRT
>at this location. Are there really that many people getting off of
>CalTrain and using the #10 bus to get to the airport?
>
>I have been looking over the area around the airport in all
>directions using Google maps. Google now has many companies labeled
>on the maps, so it is possible to see roughly what is in a
>particular area. I don't see anything which would be a significant
>draw to locals regardless of which direction the PRT runs. I also do
>not see a whole lot (other than hotels) which are likely to interest
>a significant number of airport users.
>
>Am I missing something?

Maybe you need a crystal ball - to get a better view the future?

[Brad Templeton]

The Caltrain stop of course has Caltrain, which is every 30 minutes
and much more frequent at rush hour, taking you to the downtowns of
many cities, such as Sunnyvale, Mountain View (also by LRT but much
longer route), Palo Alto and all the way up to San Francisco. And it
has Santa Clara University, which has students who are transit users.
"Downtown" Santa Clara is not much to speak of, unfortunately.

For fairly low money, Caltrain is supposed to get electrified and run
more often. There's a actually a decent population who might take it
to the airport if it ran every 15 minutes and there was PRT from the
station to the terminals.

The businesses around the airport are of course destinations for the
business flyers who are coming to visit those companies. Otherwise
not a lot of value.

Taxi from the airport to downtown is quite fast and about $15. As
such, even a free shuttle to the LRT results in a much longer trip,
and business flyers more often just take those taxis. Or rent a car
if they go anywhere else. Most rent cars -- they are putting in a
huge rental car garage close to the terminals. I think it has space
for 3000 rental cars and 300 local parkers!

[Ian Ford]

Brad: Captive PRT does not have a chicken and egg problem; it does not
need to blanket an entire city before it becomes reasonable. You can do
this mental exercise yourself. Currently cities like San Jose have
transit ridership in the 2-6% range by blanketing something like 50% of
the metro area. (and some of the riders also own cars!) By replacing the
denser half of that coverage to PRT (that is, 25% of the metro area), it
could change total transit ridership to something like 6-15%, and that
could be very reasonable and significant. It makes no sense to say you
are shooting for the moon (e.g. 75% ridership) and therefore any first
step towards that does not meet your critical mass requirement.

--
Ian Ford i...@ianford.com 505.246.8490

[Dennis Manning]

I'd add that no one knows where the "critical mass" point is for PRT, and
how the network theory will play out in real life, i.e. that each station
added rises in value because it connects to a network of increased size.
Some call increasing returns.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ian Ford" <i...@ianford.com>
To: <transport-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2009 5:06 PM
Subject: [t-i] Re: PRT as a Feeder To LRT


>

[Brad Templeton]

I agree that you can get ridership by covering the key areas. What I
point out is that you will not get ridership that actually matches the
traffic within those areas. This does not mean what you will get
can't be worthwhile.

As noted, the reason you will get even all the trips within your area
(short of banning cars like Masdar) is that the large number of trips
to areas outside those covered makes many people buy a car anyway, and
once they have bought the car, they will actually feel they are
wasting that car if they ride the transit.

Personal example. I had a house that was a short walk to an LRT going
right downtown. I would ride the LRT at rush hour. However, at
night, even I needed to go downtown with Kathryn, we would drive. At
night, with low congestion the drive was much quicker than the
transit, and free parking was generally available, and the cost of
gasoline for the trip was less than return transit fares for the two
of us.

To counter this, by the way, you can also encourage monthly passes for
the transit, so that the incremental transit trip is free. In that
case, you can capture my trip with a transit method with a total trip
time close to the car. That requires high station density of course,
or vehicle speeds so fast they make up for the walk times to and from
stations. On the other hand, if I have to carry stuff with me, the
car may win again. As a photographer, I keep a fairly complete photo
kit in my trunk -- heavy bag of lenses, tripod, etc. This is just in
case a photographic opportunity arises. I would not carry that on
any transit, so it becomes hard for the transit to capture my trip.

[Dennis Manning]

I heard somewhere that it costs $8m per year for the Airport to run it's shuttle buses.

[Robert Williams]

Brad, Michael

Your comments on the San Jose airport PRT were very perceptive. I would
like to add some background and comments.

The light rail did not go to the airport because the then (1981) mayor
insisted that it wind thru the center of his downtown. We (the Modern
Transit Society) and others pleaded with the authorities to include an
LRT bypass (or at least a ROW) in the parallel freeway which was built
at the same time and ran directly next to the airport. Now, of course,
VTA is desperately trying to speed up this 5 MPH bottleneck.

The charter of this project is "to develop and build an ATN within and
immediately outside of the San Jose Airport". Downtown SJ would
probably not be eligible, and Santa Clara U would definitely not be.
So they are for later. We did propose both projects back in the 1980's.
San Jose does have SJ State, the far end of which is 0.5 miles from the
LRT and 1.5 miles from Diridon station, which itself will be the major
hub of the HSR. There is also the Arena, convention center, and
downtown hotels.

It's true that the system will probably be lightly used, since the LRT
sucks and SJC is a destination, not a hub. But that's not all bad. It
means that it will be lightly stressed, which is good for a pioneer
installation. Remote parking stations and possibly a check in facility
on the far side could bring the usage up to a respectable level. Why
it's being considered has a history. About five years ago, when the
airport was planning its big expansion, a citizens' group got a ballot
passed with various demands which included an AGT connection from the
LRT. Later, Prop A, which authorized the BART extension, also included
an AGT connection from BART to the airport. So they are both (sort of)
on the hook, and after considering other proposals up to $600 M, $60 M
probably doesn't look so bad.

Finally, can PRT succeed in San Jose? Obviously, the first systems
should, and will, be niche applications, such as airports, activity
centers, and feeders. But if PRT is going to be anything more than a
niche player, then Santa Clara County is exactly where it should go.
Approaching two million people, many to many, hopeless for conventional
transit. Some years ago, I layed out a 0.5 mile spacing PRT grid over
the whole populated area, and calculated (thru wild estimates) that it
would cost not too much more to build than what the residents and
community spent each year on their automobiles. I feel more confident
than apparently lots of you that the majority of the people will be
quite willing to walk (or bike, etc) a quarter mile or up to half a mile
in our beautiful, sunny climate in order to zip directly to the doors of
wherever they choose to go (places where they used to walk up to a
quarter mile from the parking lot).

[Michael Weidler]

Actually, the businesses near the airport - regardless of which direction you choose - are not likely to be big air passenger magnets. I'm seeing lots of machine shops, auto body shops, and similar businesses. I don't see anything other than the hotels to attract air passengers and most of those are technically "out of scope". --- On Thu, 11/5/09, Brad Templeton <bra...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Brad Templeton <bra...@gmail.com> Subject: [t-i] Re: San Jose PRT

[Mr_Grant]

"The area surrounding the airport is slated for significant growth..."

See pp. 4-5 of the San Jose RFI document
http://bit.ly/3Bt4eR

On Nov 5, 6:34 pm, Michael Weidler <pstran...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Actually, the businesses near the airport - regardless of which direction you choose - are not likely to be big air passenger magnets. I'm seeing lots of machine shops, auto body shops, and similar businesses. I don't see anything other than the hotels to attract air passengers and most of those are technically "out of scope".
>

> --- On Thu, 11/5/09, Brad Templeton <brad...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> From: Brad Templeton <brad...@gmail.com>
> Subject: [t-i] Re: San Jose PRT
> To: "transport-innovators" <transport-...@googlegroups.com>
> Date: Thursday, November 5, 2009, 5:05 PM
>
>

[Brad Templeton]

There's some of that but there's also a lot of ordinary silicon valley
high tech firms around the airport, don't just listen to Google maps
which doesn't give you the names of people in multi-tennant buildings
so often.

However, those folks can already get easily to the airport. Until
recently they could easily get from it too, but they just put the
minimum fare on the Taxicabs of $15 for the first 3 miles, which must
annoy all the people who actually have offices etc. within 1-2 miles.

It is a shame it can't go downtown. While you say it could not go to
SCU, I think if it goes to Caltrain/BART it is effectively going to
serve SCU, but of course SCU students do not have great demand to go
to the airport and environs, and if they want to go to downtown SJ
they can take caltrain or the bus or even ACE sometimes.

If it could go downtown there really would be limited need to bring
BART to the airport, and as noted that would save far more money than
even an extensive PRT would cost. BART to the (rear end of the)
airport is stupid, and I suspect will not get any ridership able to
justify its cost. Hell, even SFO which had BART come right into the
airport (screwing it up as a caltrain connection and many other
things) can't justify the cost for an airport 3 times the size and in
an area where BART will get many times the riders living near it!

On Nov 5, 6:34 pm, Michael Weidler <pstran...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Actually, the businesses near the airport - regardless of which direction you choose - are not likely to be big air passenger magnets. I'm seeing lots of machine shops, auto body shops, and similar businesses. I don't see anything other than the hotels to attract air passengers and most of those are technically "out of scope".
>

> --- On Thu, 11/5/09, Brad Templeton <brad...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Brad Templeton <brad...@gmail.com>

[Jerry Roane]

Michael

It is a special purpose shuttle bus service that is "free".  I think they were calling it the ten. 

Jerry Roane

[Jack Slade]

There is also the fact that none of us are able to choose the location where we get our first start.  The reality is that we have to deal with whoever wants it first.   Ideally, I would want to start in a downtown core, where there are a lot of people walking around, and parking costs $10 and more per day, and expand out to other areas, the Airport and suburbs.   Reversing this plan, and expanding inwards, will probably be less profitable at first, but won't matter in the long term (less profits=takes longer to expand).   If a City has a percieved need to do it that way, what choice do I have. If nobody uses it for a whole day, I don't have to pay drivers, power company,  and tell a few employees...cleaners, etc, to take a paid afternoon off and go swimming or something. This kind of goodwill always pays off, in the long run.   Jack Slade

--- On Thu, 11/5/09, Jerry Roane <jerry...@gmail.com> wrote:

From: Jerry Roane <jerry...@gmail.com> Subject: [t-i] Re: San Jose PRT To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

[Jack Slade]

Thanks for this information, Robert. I think you have the PRT idea pegged correctly. Would it help if the people who buke to stations could take their bikes along with them?   Jack Slade --- On Fri, 11/6/09, Robert Williams <rlw...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

transit.  Some years ago, I layed out a 0..5 mile spacing PRT grid over

the whole populated area, and calculated (thru wild estimates) that it would cost not too much more to build than what the residents and

community spent each year on their automobiles..  I feel more confident

>>> It's probably because the LRT is already in place and not likely to be abandoned any time soon..

[Benke]

Brad: I think you are rigth except for one thing: Congestion. Wtihout
the congestion situation it would be very hard
to convince the car-owning majority to take the PRT even with its
superior characteristics (for transit).

[Mike C]

On Nov 5, 8:40 pm, Brad Templeton <brad...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Personal example.  I had a house that was a short walk to an LRT going
> right downtown.  I would ride the LRT at rush hour.  However, at
> night, even I needed to go downtown with Kathryn, we would drive.   At
> night, with low congestion the drive was much quicker than the
> transit, and free parking was generally available, and the cost of
> gasoline for the trip was less than return transit fares for the two
> of us.

For a system like PRT which has little service-availability overhead,
low ridership periods are not a problem. Even if the PRT is heavily
used 4 hours a day and lightly used for the other 20, it can still be
operationally efficient.

Note, this is completely different for LRT, which incurs significant
operational overhead just to be AVAILABLE. So when the trains are
empty 20 hours a day, costs go up, efficiency goes down, routes get
cut or reduced, causing further reduced ridership and continuing the
cycle.

So, if the roads are clear at night and people mostly drive, that's
likely not a problem as long as the total daily ridership is above a
certain threshold. PRT then becomes mainly a rush-period supplement to
keep the roads from clogging up, with the added benefit of 24-hour
service for those without cars. Eventually (long term) areas may have
dense enough coverage that people actually stop buying cars. E.g.,
Manhattan has low car ownership because the transit/cab network
provides sufficient service for many.

>
> To counter this, by the way, you can also encourage monthly passes for
> the transit, so that the incremental transit trip is free.  In that
> case, you can capture my trip with a transit method with a total trip
> time close to the car.   That requires high station density of course,
> or vehicle speeds so fast they make up for the walk times to and from
> stations.    On the other hand, if I have to carry stuff with me, the
> car may win again.   As a photographer, I keep a fairly complete photo
> kit in my trunk -- heavy bag of lenses, tripod, etc.   This is just in
> case a photographic opportunity arises.   I would not carry that on
> any transit, so it becomes hard for the transit to capture my trip.
>

Of course there will be trips that are still best in the car. I don't
anticipate there being a big grocery-shopping crowd in most PRT
stations (Masdar excluded, of course). But even if it only covers the
briefcase-carrying rush-hour commuter, I believe that will be
sufficient to make it feasible. Again, this is due to the relatively
low overhead required to provide off-peak service availability.

If I were doing the planning, I would target travelers first. Connect
the hotels to the airport, convention center, business parks, and
major tourist areas. Even in sprawled cities, these kinds of
destinations tend to be in clusters, so it should be possible to
create a reasonably useful network without covering every single area
of the city. Tourists are a sort of captive market for transit,
because tourists often don't rent cars, especially business travelers.
A PRT system in tourist areas would likely demand a higher fare than a
commuter system, increasing the revenue for future expansion.
Businesses like hotels might also be more likely to participate (e.g.
in-hotel stations) if the destinations are traveler-friendly.

Mike C

[Walter Brewer]

The beauty of on demand operation, although the capital investment to be
amortized is still there.

For a mature good coverage PRT system has anyone compared the capital cost
at least on a per capita basis for PRT compared to automobile ownership? The
vast majority of USA travelers are willing to tie up many $thousands for the
convenience offered.
What would the equivalent for PRT be?
I realize this quickly gets into relacing one or more cars, but the upper
bound with complete replacement of auto travel would help scope the
financial comparison.
The other extreme is as Beneke points out; PRT as a congestion buster.
There the competition is cost of new roads.

Walt Brewer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Mike C" <mwil...@gmail.com>
To: "transport-innovators" <transport-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 8:59 AM
Subject: [t-i] Re: PRT as a Feeder To LRT

[Richard Gronning]

Rob; I have NO idea who Brad Williams is. He's new to the group.
Obviously, he's an official in San Jose.

[Michael Weidler]

I agree. Which is why I don't buy the arguement that PRT needs to be everywhere in order to be effective. --- On Fri, 11/6/09, Benke <bengt.gu...@beamways.com> wrote:

From: Benke <bengt.gu...@beamways.com> Subject: [t-i] Re: PRT as a Feeder To LRT

[Brad Templeton]

It's not that the PRT can't be efficient during off-peak. It's that
because there is no congestion off-peak, and usually free parking off-
peak, its most compelling advantages can be lost during that period,
and people will use cars. Some PRTs will be faster than cars even
off-peak but others are not, and the cars will offer door to door
during periods of plentiful parking.

So these trips will not be taken away from the cars, even though the
PRT is operating nicely, quickly and efficiently.

As I noted, another type of trip that can't be captured from the cars
is the trip with significant cargo, and not just cargo I am taking on
a particular trip, but with cargo I just want to have with me "just in
case." Who doesn't have a collection of stuff in their car "just in
case" which you would never carry with you on a transit trip, but like
to know is there?

[Dennis Manning]

Brad:

You 're arguing with yourself. No one on this list is suggesting that PRT
can substitute for all the car trips. Just enough of them that it will be a
viable system.

Did the Internet get rid of land line phones? No, but it sure has changed
the mix.

Dennis

----- Original Message -----

From: "Brad Templeton" <bra...@gmail.com>
To: "transport-innovators" <transport-...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Friday, November 06, 2009 12:21 PM
Subject: [t-i] Re: PRT as a Feeder To LRT

[Mike C]

On Nov 6, 3:54 pm, "Dennis Manning" <john.manni...@comcast.net> wrote:
> Brad:
>
> You 're arguing with yourself. No one on this list is suggesting that PRT
> can substitute for all the car trips. Just enough of them that it will be a
> viable system.
>
> Did the Internet get rid of land line phones? No, but it sure has changed
> the mix.

Yes, exactly my point. PRT doesn't have to be used all the time for it
to be useful or beneficial.

Note, this is NOT generally true with scheduled transit, because the
high costs of simply making transit *available* makes it essential to
be *used* whenever available; otherwise efficiency plummets.

Mike C

[Jerry Schneider]

At 02:45 PM 11/6/2009, you wrote:


>On Nov 6, 3:54 pm, "Dennis Manning" <john.manni...@comcast.net> wrote:
> > Brad:
> >
> > You 're arguing with yourself. No one on this list is suggesting that PRT
> > can substitute for all the car trips. Just enough of them that it will be a
> > viable system.
> >
> > Did the Internet get rid of land line phones? No, but it sure has changed
> > the mix.
>
>Yes, exactly my point. PRT doesn't have to be used all the time for it
>to be useful or beneficial.

How does one determine how much it needs to be used by fare paying
passengers (at what price) to be deemed "satisfactory" by the system
providers? There
would be interest payments to make on the borrowed capital used to
build it, labor costs
to pay as needed to keep the system sufficiently open, provide
necessary security
and required maintenance, perhaps some periodic subsidy payments,
savings accounts
to pay for expected upgrades from time to time, and so on. How does one measure
"efficiency" in these terms?

[Mike C]

On Nov 6, 7:36 pm, Jerry Schneider <j...@peak.org> wrote:
> At 02:45 PM 11/6/2009, you wrote:
>
> How does one determine how much it needs to be used by fare paying
> passengers (at what price) to be deemed "satisfactory" by the system
> providers? There
> would be interest payments to make on the borrowed capital used to
> build it, labor costs
> to pay as needed to keep the system sufficiently open, provide
> necessary security
> and required maintenance, perhaps some periodic subsidy payments,
> savings accounts
> to pay for expected upgrades from time to time, and so on. How does one measure
> "efficiency" in these terms?
>

All public systems have these costs, but scheduled transit has the
additional fixed costs of running fixed schedules - primarily the
driver salary and energy usage of the vehicle. This is a FIXED cost
set by the schedule, regardless of how much is recovered in fares.

Let me try to express it mathematically. Let x = the average cost of
moving one PRT vehicle one mile, and y = the average cost of moving
one light rail train one mile.

Assume a LRT line runs an average of 15 minute frequency, 18 hours a
day, on a 10 mile bidirectional line (20 mi total). The total miles
traveled by the trains is: 4 vehicles/hr * 18 hours * 20 mi = 1440
vehicle miles per day. The total cost of the schedule is 1440y.

Now let's say there are p passenger trips per day, averaging 1 mile
per trip (for simplicity). The total cost per LRT passenger mile is
then 1440y/p.

For PRT, the vehicles move only when needed, so in the worst case (1
passengers per pod, full round trips), the vehicles will travel 2p
miles per day, and consume 2px cost.

On a per passenger-mile basis, PRT consumes 2px/p = 2x.

So total per-passenger mile operational costs in this example are:

PRT: 2x
LRT: 1440y/p

Then, if y=20x (i.e. it costs 20 times more to move a train than a
pod, reasonable considering the cost of the larger vehicle and
driver), it becomes:

PRT: 2x
LRT: 28800x/p

The break even point for LRT vs PRT is 14,400 passenger trips per day:
below that and PRT is more efficient, above that, LRT is more
efficient. But also, this assumes 15-minute average frequency; for an
LRT carrying 14,400 passengers per day, higher frequency might be
needed, thereby increasing the numerator, so it's not so clear a
cutoff.

But the point is, LRT operational efficiency relies on a large "p" in
the denominator to offset that huge overhead in the numerator. PRT
operational costs per passenger are both small and *independent* of
"p", making it inherently more stable in costs with respect to demand
fluctuations.

The caveat is fixed costs (construction costs, control room costs),
which must be paid regardless. These fixed costs must be covered by
operational profit, so there is a minimum daily PRT ridership
threshold that would be necessary to cover those fixed costs. I
acknowledge that those fixed costs may dominate total costs,
especially in a small network - in that case, the PRT operational
benefit is diminished.

But then, scheduled systems also have those fixed costs, without the
operational cost benefit of PRT.

Mike C

[Michael Weidler]

How does one determine it for a LRT system? It depends on who is operating the system and what they decide is "satisfactory". Whatever the decision PRT is pretty much guaranteed to cost less than LRT both in capital costs and O&M.

[Jack Slade]

The city could pay the interest, and some capotal reduction, with the money they do NOT have to fork out in the form of yearly subsidies, and still be better off than with any other form of transport.   Let's take the San Jose proposal as an example:  If the whole  60 million they are proposing to start with was borrowed capital, the annual interest would be 3 million (@5%). The system would have to be a total flop to make less than $10,000 per day.   Does anybody think that anything else can be done that would not require a subsidy much greater than this?    Subsidies are large burdens to many cities. In Toronto, it has now grown to more than 600 million/yr  .   Jack Slade --- On Sat, 11/7/09, Jerry Schneider <j...@peak.org> wrote:

[Michael Weidler]

Jack, what system are you talking about? San Jose is doing a free shuttle - not a "system". I don't think 4 buses and 4 drivers are going to save them $10,000 a day. --- On Fri, 11/6/09, Jack Slade <skytr...@rogers.com> wrote:

[Jerry Schneider]

At 06:54 PM 11/6/2009, you wrote:
>How does one determine it for a LRT system? It depends on who is
>operating the system and what they decide is "satisfactory".
>Whatever the decision PRT is pretty much guaranteed to cost less
>than LRT both in capital costs and O&M.

Agreed - but that comparison really wasn't my question. I was asking
what kind of a load factor on a PRT system would be considered to be
satisfactory to the provider of such a system. And, what would the
calculation need to include to find an answer?

[Jack Slade]

I am not talking about what they have now. That is free to the riders, but costs the city money.   I am talking about the approximate amount they are proposing for the PRT system that they are soon going to put out for bid proposals. Is this hard to understand? If so: If they make any profit from PRT, it is better than the money they are spending now to provide free bus service, plus it is green, which is also their aim.   We can argue for another month about if the added conveniences of PRT will attract new customers. I hope it does, but if it doesn't, I think there is enough riders at present usage levels to let the city break  even. That is worse case scenario. We can only guess at how many people would still use a bus or taxi service if a cheaper, faster alternative was available. Your guess is as good as mine.   Jack Slade   --- On Sat, 11/7/09, Michael Weidler <pstransit@yahoo..com> wrote:

>to be useful or beneficial..

[Jack Slade]

Jerry, now that you have simplified the question, I think I can give you the simplified answer.  It is basically what I just said in my previous post to Michael:   Any ridership figures that lets any municipality make any profit at all is better than what currently exists, because current systems never break even.

Jack Slade --- On Sat, 11/7/09, Jerry Schneider <j...@peak.org> wrote:

From: Jerry Schneider <j...@peak.org> Subject: [t-i] Re: PRT as a Feeder To LRT To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

Date: Saturday, November 7, 2009, 4:57 AM

At 06:54 PM 11/6/2009, you wrote: >How does one determine it for a LRT system? It depends on who is >operating the system and what they decide is "satisfactory". >Whatever the decision PRT is pretty much guaranteed to cost less >than LRT both in capital costs and O&M. Agreed - but that comparison really wasn't my question. I was asking what kind of a load factor on a PRT system would be considered to be

satisfactory to the provider of such a system.. And, what would the

[Walter Brewer]

Happy to see some discussion of fare setting I brought up,(again), a few days back. But somehow definitions are needed. In the situations being used for illustration for example, what do; break even, profit, mean?

Capital amortization can be a large factor. Jack illustrates daily interest cost. Is it expected municipalities will write that off as "free" Federal funds? In a recent SD case, the capital cost per boarding turned out to be $9, for a $2 fare. The fare coveres less than 50% of operating costs.

Can such favorable deals be expected for PRT from skeptical clients?

 

 Walt Brewer