PRT Statewide Application: Conceptual Design of a Transit System Capable of Serving Essentially All Daily Trips

Abstract

While the State of New Jersey has extensive commuter railroad, light rail, and express and local bus systems, these transit systems serve only 5% of the State's daily work trips and a substantially smaller percentage of daily nonwalking trips. While extensive, these systems are incapable of offering competitive service to the diverse bulk of everyday trips that are spatially and temporally distributed throughout the state. Consequently, these trips are served by the ubiquity and efficient connectivity afforded by the state's roadway system through the use of on-demand personal automobiles. This paper describes attempts to conceptually design a statewide transit system that would afford automobile-like service ubiquitously to essentially all daily nonwalking trips. Technologically, the transit system is an area-wide Automated Transit Network (ATN) of auto-sized vehicles offering personalized on-demand non-stop service between all stations, commonly known as a Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system. Presented is one state-wide design consisting of 8,099 stations interconnected by 16,926 kilometers of one-way guideway in which 215,000 vehicles serve 25 million daily trips.