Personal Rapid Transit, between pro and con Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is a fully automatic and individual public transport system, without waiting times and intermediate stops but with light vehicles with high speeds and exclusive right-of-way on a light track. In this paper, some traffic aspects of these systems are elaborated, like the exclusive track, offline dwelling, traffic safety, capacity of track and stations and the number of vehicles in relation with the reliability of the system. Thereafter considerations are made about the necessity of altering the concept of the system of Personal Rapid Transit due to boundary conditions. The high costs of the infrastructure in relation with the expected number of passengers will provide a very high threshold for realisation. Capacity and distance between stations are comparable with the common bus. Traffic safety demands pose strict conditions for the headway, especially at the switches near stations: less then 15 s is not realistic. The headways of 2 s proposed for PRT-concepts cannot be realised without seriously turning down the traffic safety and therefore the reliability of the system. (Author/publisher)
Abstract