Minnesota is ponnying up $4 million toward personal rapid transit, according to a Star Tribune article. THe state is looking to provide part of thefunding for a testingand training facility for PRT to be run by Taxi 2000. At present, Taxi 2000 is convincing Minneapolis that they could be a self-funding 32 mile PRT streach in downtown for under $600 million.
Which puts it at about $18.75 million a mile. Light Rail construction average $70 million per mile. Somehow I'm having trouble believing that PRT is a fourth the cost of light rail, no matter how efficient and effective they are at building it.
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amg | 12:22 PM |
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What a mistake in the making. $4 million could double the headways of an entire bus system in many smaller cities around the U.S.
The biggest reason PRT is destined to fail is that it takes the auto approach to movement, which is individual and direct- a.k.a. door-to-door. The assumption here is that the transport technology (PRT) responds to the land use. The auto is the ultimate solution in this area because it overcomes the range of movement entirely. Leave your house, drive to the strip mall or big box, etc. Fine, assuming you can park.
However, PRT takes this promise of automobility and assumption that there is nothing wrong with the land use pattern of urban sprawl, and attempts to append the beginning and end of a normal transit trip-WALKING- onto the auto travel format.
Then it adds to the walking portion of a transit trip a vertical walking movement to reach a raised guideway. And herein lies the problem: unless PRT is literally, everywhere- most of America built in the last 50 years is too inhospitable to walking to facilitate the origin-to-PRT and PRT-to-destination portions of the trip without major sidewalk and walking improvements.
Of course, the PRT cheerleader response will be "but PRT will come right to your door!" Yes, but only if we put it everywhere there's a road and put an astronomical amount of stations out there.
Oh well- we'll let Minnesota demonstrate the ridiculousness of it for us, and go from there.
But that's whole point of PRT in an urban area!! The ideal system would penetrate an urban area with a quarter-mile grid of guideways and stations, so that no-one would be more than ten minutes' walk from one.
However PRT can just as easily replace an existing mass transportation corridor and provide a vastly better service for the same money.
The answer as to why PRT construction costs are quoted as being so much less than those of light rail are really quite simple, if you think about it. The PRT infrastructure is considerably smaller and lighter than a twin-track railroad. And the cost of vehicles and stations is correspondingly less too. There are hardly any land acquisition costs too, which also helps a great deal.
'$4 million could double the headways of an entire bus system' $4 million buys you about 10 new low pollution buses or 301.7 feet of light rail.
Cycle ways cost £300,000 per mile. The ULTRA PRT system provides less 'maximum' load than cyclists. The Taxi 2000 system is raised on legs spaced about the same distance as street lights. Street lights cost about $100,000 per mile to install ( and they have an underground cable). The Taxi 2000 system has moderately bigger legs and a mass produced rail ( a smart ass Ibeam). Fairground thrill rides ( much higher forces ) are built for about $1 million per mile( but they have to run at a profit).
So no digging up the road/ground, no levelling, no drainage, no hauling of large trucks of soil/sand/gravel/concrete/. Sounds reasonable to me.
But it seems worth gambling 301.7 feet of light rail to see if transport can be built four (4.4) times cheaper. If someone came to you and said I can sell you a $250,000 sports car for $56,800 wouldn't you be a little curious ?
