Traffic relief that permits an additional increment of development is the foundation for public-private cooperation in building people movers to serve suburban activity centers. The most important variables in assessing economic potential are land prices, scale of theactivity center, and degree of congestion relief that the project will bring. Using people movers as circulation systems to reduce internal, site-specific automobile trips is unlikely to justify significant private investment. However, reducing regional automobile use through strategies that incorporate people movers can generate economic value. People movers, therefore, are viewed as passenger distribution systems that disperse travelers arriving on a variety of regional transport modes to destinations throughout the activity center. The distribution or circulation systems are envisioned as a mix of walkways and people mover technologies, with an emphasis on flexibilityand phased implementation. Shuttles and miniloops operating at close headways are more likely to find application than grand loops linking a few key locations. Revenues from the sale of new development rights, property taxes, special assessments, public matching funds, and user fees are projected for activity centers of varying sizes to derive financing scenarios for congestion mitigation systems. Certain institutional problems in implementation are presented and a profile of activity centers most likely to be candidates for people movers is discussed. This paper appears in transportation research recordno. 1266, Urban public transportation research 1990 .
Samenvatting