Originally developed by the Dashaveyor Company for moving cargo, the system used motorized pallets that could be routed on the fly to any destination in an extended network. The pallets could run at high speeds between stations, climb steep grades at slower speeds, and even climb vertically. They were designed to replace several manned vehicles with a single automated one, controlled from a central operating station. One such system was installed and operated at the White Pine mine from 1968 to 1972, but was considered a failure.
Bendix Corporation purchased the rights to the basic Dashaveyor system in order to use it as the basis for an AGT system during the heyday of urban transport research in the late 1960s. Often referred to as the Bendix-Dashaveyor in this form, the system used the basic design of the cargo system, but with a larger passenger body running on rubber wheels. Only one such system was installed, the 5km long Toronto Zoo Domain Ride which operated from 1976 until a lack of proper maintenance led to an accident that forced its closure in 1994.
History
Original design
The Dashaveyor concept started with Stanley Dashew, a prolific inventor who is best known for building the embossing machines used to produce the BankAmericard, the first plastic bank credit card system, which later evolved into Visa.[1]
Dashew moved into the area of offshore oil loading in the 1960s, and was instrumental in the creation of the single-point mooring systems used in modern terminals, as well as the omnidirectional thrusters used to maneuver the ships up to the moors.[1] As a part of these developments, Dashew became interested in using similar offshore mooring to handle bulk freight as well, especially container shipping which was rapidly dominating the industry. After consulting with experts in the automated warehousing field for several months, he incorporated the Dashveyor Company in 1963 in California to develop these ideas.[2]
The company's solution to this problem was an automated conveyor, similar to the track-based systems being introduced for industrial automation and warehousing systems. Unlike those systems, however, the mooring points were so far offshore that the movement from the ship to the land-side terminal would be a significant delay. The system they designed operated at speeds up to 80mph (130km/h) in order to reduce these delays. A variety of options were available to improve flexibility. The cars were normally powered by two electric motors spinning steel wheels that ran on steel rails at high speeds, but could optionally include a traction gear that engaged rack gears between the running rails that allowed them to climb high grades at lower speeds. Optional elevator-like systems allowed the cars to move vertically as well.[2]
The idea was to build an offshore terminal with docks equipped with Dashaveyor tracks instead of a conventional container shipping port on land. An operator would load containers onto Dashaveyor cars, which would then enter a tunnel to move them at high speed to the shore. There they would exit the tunnel and automatically drive the container to its storage location, and optionally lift it to stack them. In a Dashaveyor equipped port, a single vehicle would pick up, move and stack the containers. Normally each of these steps required a separate, manned, vehicle. Additionally, the ships never had to enter port, which had major advantages in terms of siting and construction.[2]
The system would also be useful for similar roles where any sort of freight was being moved from point to point using custom vehicles; the company advertised the system for mining, trans-shipping, large factory automation and warehousing.
White Pine
In 1965 the Copper Range company decided to dig a new shaft at their White Pine mine in Michigan. Copper Range was involved in a number of different technology projects, and for the new shaft they decided to experiment with automated ore hauling to the nearby mill. They reached an agreement with Dashaveyor in 1966 to install a pilot system, and when this proved successful, the two companies signed a contract for a complete system.[3]
Starting in 1967, workers laid 27,000 feet (8,200m) of guideway rail for about $2.5million. The rails consisted of two I-beams for the running wheels, with an optional rack gear on the bottom that could be engaged to allow the cars to climb higher graded areas. The cars sat between the rails, hanging down between them, with doors on top that opened and closed automatically to keep the ore from falling out when in motion. Major portions of the network were enclosed in rectangular tubes to protect them from the elements, especially snow. The cars could be loaded at 5mph (8.0km/h) without stopping, and traveled at up to 52mph (84km/h) on straight sections of the track. Cars were normally linked to form small trains to increase route capacity, but could be detached to operate independently, all under the control of a single operator.[3]
In 1972 Copper Range stated that "Design problems could not be solved" and that they were ending experiments with the system. This left the mine with no way to haul the ore from the new shaft to the mill, and they fell back on underground systems to bring the ore to the original shaft. The new shaft was used for ventilation after this point.[3]
AGT systems
In 1968 the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a series of reports, known simply as the HUD reports, that described the problems in modern cities due to the rapid expansion of suburbs in the 1950s. The rise of the suburbs led to a flight of capital from the city centres, which in turn led to the widespread urban decay seen in the 1960s.
The reports noted that cities with well-developed mass transportation systems avoided the worse of these problems. However, these systems were very expensive, and were only suitable for the densely populated areas of large cities. The reports called for a government-supported development project to design mass transit systems with greatly reduced capital and operating costs, making them suitable for less-dense environments. Busses and streetcars offered a solution, but as they traveled in traffic their speeds were not comparable to separated rail systems.
They key appeared to be to use smaller vehicles, which reduced the size of the entire system; stations, tracks and switches all took up less room and cost less to build. However, smaller vehicles also have lower passenger capacities, a problem for rush hour periods. In the 1960s a solution to this problem was becoming practical; using automated guideway transit (AGT) technologies, the cars could be made to run much closer together to improve capacity.[4] Their small size and lack of a driver would improve economics; payrolls amount to 60% to 70% of the operating costs of traditional transportation systems.[5]
When funding was announced in 1968, the US was in the midst of winding down construction for both the Vietnam War and Project Apollo, leaving the aerospace industry with a sudden lack of projects. Many of the HUD research funds were directed towards aerospace companies, and a wide variety of AGT programs followed.
Bendix-Dashaveyor
One of these companies was the Bendix Corporation, who found the Dashaveyor concept and decided it would make the basis for a competitive AGT system. Its main advantages in this role were its high speed and its ability to switch among a network of tracks. Most competing AGT systems operated at a fixed speed that was much lower than the Dashaveyor, and normally followed fixed routes. They purchased the company and turned it into a subsidiary, developing the AGT versions in Ann Arbor, Michigan.[6]
Conversion to an AGT system was relatively straightforward. The steel wheels were replaced with rubber ones, which ran in a narrow concrete guideway structure instead of the I-beam rails. The guideway was roughly the size and shape of a pedestrian sidewalk, with short vertical extension on either side to form a U-shape. Small horizontal wheels at the front of the cars pressed against the vertical sections and guided the main wheels around corners. Power was provided via a third rail system attached to the top of the right vertical extension (as seen in the direction of travel).
The vehicle body was extended upward and generally enlarged to form a van-like structure holding 31 passengers.[7] An image of the vehicle was published in Popular Science in its November 1971 edition in a story about personal rapid transit[8] Each car had three sets of automated doors, entering into a set of facing seats. This divided the internal area into sections; it was not possible to walk the length of the vehicle, nor were there provisions for standing. They were normally operated in trains of two or four cars.
In 1972, the company displayed the Dashaveyor as one of four major deployments shown at the Transpo '72 show in Washington, D.C.[7][11] Like the other vendors, Bendix found little third-party interest in the AGT market, and was one of the first vendors to withdraw from the market, inactive by 1975.[12]
Toronto Zoo
Details of the Dashaveyor's running gear are visible in this photo. The small horizontal wheels at the front steer the larger running wheels just visible behind them. The electrical supply uses a small 3rd rail shaped like a V with a pickup that pushes up on the bottom of it. The operator can also be seen in the front left of the cabin.
Bendix had found a customer willing to act as a prototype site, the new Toronto Zoo that would be opening in 1974. The zoo covered 700 acres (2.8km2), which made walking the site a difficult proposition.[13]Boeing also entered a bid based on their new version of the Alden staRRcar.[14] At the same time, the provincial government was in the midst of planning a major AGT system known as GO-Urban, and Bendix was one of many companies to bid for that project. The Zoo system would be an excellent demonstration for the GO-Urban decision.
For the zoo deployment, a greatly simplified operating system was needed. Since the schedules were relatively slow, on the order of 10 minutes between trains, the automated system was not needed. The cars were modified to place a small operator cabin at the front of some of them, entered through a separate door. Trains normally operated in four-car units, with the cabins facing front and rear. The rear-facing cabin was used while backing up the trains. The operator also doubled as the tour guide.[15]
Three miles of track wound around the site, with a spur running to a maintenance depot at the northern end of the zoo. Most of the track was laid at ground level, although there were elevated portions above terrain features. In spite of operating on four wheels similar to a bus, the system was often referred to as a monorail.[16] Twenty-four vehicles were purchased for the system, sometimes operating in four-car trains during periods of increased demand.[15]
Known as the Toronto Zoo Domain Ride, the system opened in 1976. In March 1991 nine people were injured when two trains collided.[17] In spite of a warning that major maintenance was needed to fix problems in the brakes and motors,[18] in 1994 another accident occurred that injured thirty. The zoo was fined $43,000,[19] and instead of fixing the system the board of directors decided to close the system, and operations ended that year.
Related Research Articles
Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), also referred to as podcars or guided/railed taxis, is a public transport mode featuring small low-capacity automated vehicles operating on a network of specially built guideways. PRT is a type of automated guideway transit (AGT), a class of system which also includes larger vehicles all the way to small subway systems. In terms of routing, it tends towards personal public transport systems.
A people mover or automated people mover (APM) is a type of small scale automated guideway transit system. The term is generally used only to describe systems serving relatively small areas such as airports, downtown districts or theme parks.
An automated guideway transit (AGT) or automated fixed-guideway transit or automatic guideway transit system is a type of fixed guideway transit infrastructure with a riding or suspension track that supports and physically guides one or more driverless vehicles along its length. The vehicles are often rubber tired or steel wheeled, but other traction systems including air cushion, suspended monorail and maglev have been implemented. The guideway provides both physical support, like a road, as well as the guidance.
Innovia Metro is an automated rapid transit system manufactured by Alstom. Innovia Metro systems run on conventional metal rails and pull power from a third rail but are powered by a linear induction motor that provides traction by using magnetic force to pull on a "fourth rail" placed between the running rails. However, newer versions of the technology are available with standard electric rotary propulsion.
The Toronto Zoo Domain Ride was an automated guideway transit (AGT) service used to carry visitors between sections, or "domains", of the Toronto Zoo. Though technologically closer to a simple rubber-tired metro, it was almost universally referred to as a "monorail".
Various terms are used for passenger railway lines and equipment; the usage of these terms differs substantially between areas:
Cabinentaxi, sometimes Cabintaxi in English, was a German people mover development project undertaken by Demag and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm with funding and support from the Bundesministerium für Forschung und Technologie. Cabinentaxi was designed to offer low-cost mass transit services where conventional systems, like a metro, would be too expensive to deploy due to low ridership or high capital costs.
The Innovia APM 100 is an automated people mover (APM) rolling stock first developed by Westinghouse, intended mainly for airport connections and light rail in towns. They are operated by Automatic Train Control (ATC), making it fully automatic and driverless.
U.S. International Transportation Exposition, better known as Transpo '72, was a trade show held on 300 acres (1.2 km2) of land at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, D.C., for nine days from May 27 to June 4, 1972. The $10 million event, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, was a showcase for all sorts of transportation-related technologies. Over a million visitors flocked to the show from all over the world. According to the Wall Street Journal, it was "the biggest show the government has put on since World War II."
LTV's (Vought) Airtrans was an automated people mover system that operated at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport between 1974 and 2005. The adaptable people mover was utilized for several separate systems: the Airport Train, Employee Train, American Airlines TrAAin and utility service. All systems utilized the same guideways and vehicle base but served different stations to create various routes.
The ACT, acronym for Automatically Controlled Transportation or Activity Center Transit, was a people mover system developed during the 1970s. One feature of the ACT is that it allowed bi-directional travel on a single rail—cars passed each other by switching onto short bypass lanes on the track, distributed where space allowed. ACT was a contender in the Urban Mass Transportation Administration's plan to deploy three or four systems in cities in the United States, as well as the GO-Urban project in Toronto, Canada. One ACT system was installed as a part of a Ford-funded real estate development near their headquarters in Dearborn, MI, and although they proposed to install ACT in several other locations, no additional systems were ever installed and the project was put on indefinite hold.
The Alden staRRcar, short for "Self-Transport Road and Rail Car", was a personal rapid transit (PRT) system designed by William Alden in the 1960s. It originally envisioned small electrically powered cars suitable for short distance trips at low speed within urban areas, which could optionally merge onto tracks that would provide power and guidance for high-speed travel over longer inter-city distances. It was one of the earliest dual-mode vehicles to be proposed, and one of the earliest to be actually built.
ROMAG was a personal rapid transit (PRT) system produced by the American company Rohr, Inc. It featured a linear induction motor that was arranged to provide both traction and suspension in a magnetic levitation system.
The Computer-controlled Vehicle System, almost universally referred to as CVS, was a personal rapid transit (PRT) system developed by a Japanese industrial consortium during the 1970s. Like most PRT systems under design at the same time, CVS was based around a small four-person electric vehicle similar to a small minivan that could be requested on demand and drive directly to the user's destination. Unlike other PRT systems, however, CVS also offered cargo vehicles, included "dual-use" designs that could be manually driven off the PRT network, and included the ability to stop at intersections in a conventional road-like network.
Krauss-Maffei's Transurban was a 12-passenger automated guideway transit (AGT) mass transit system based on a maglev guideway. Development started in 1970 as one of the many AGT and PRT projects that followed in the wake of the HUD reports of 1968. Its selection as the basis of the GO-Urban system in Toronto in 1973 made it well known in the industry; it would have been the basis of the first large-area AGT mass transit network in the world. Technical problems cropped up during the construction of the test track, and the sudden removal of funding by the West German government led to the project's cancellation in late 1974. The Ontario government completed development and installation of a non-maglev version, today known as the Bombardier Advanced Rapid Transit.
GO-Urban was a planned mass transit project for Greater Toronto to be operated by GO Transit. The system envisioned the use of automated guideway transit vehicles set up in hydro corridors and other unused parcels of land to provide rapid transit services without the expense of constructing tunnels. GO-Urban would serve high-density areas in the downtown core, but also be able to accelerate to high speed between distant stations in the outskirts of the city. Similar deployments were planned for Hamilton and Ottawa.
The University of the Philippines Diliman AGT was an automated guideway transit (AGT) system constructed for technology demonstration within the campus of the University of the Philippines (UP) in Diliman, Quezon City in the Philippines. It served as a test track for the first mass transit system to be built and developed in the country by local engineers.
Minitram was an automated guideway transit system studied by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory (TRRL), part of the UK Department of the Environment's Ministry of Transport. The system was based on small, completely automated tram-like vehicles of about 25 passengers that could be connected together into three-car trains to increase capacity. Proposed designs were submitted by Hawker Siddeley Dynamics (HSD) and EASAMS. HSD's system used rubber wheels and EASAMS' steerable steel ones, but the projects were otherwise similar and notably shared a linear motor for propulsion and most braking. A series of failed sales efforts in the UK and to the GO-Urban system in Toronto, combined with decreased government spending in the 1970s, led to the concept being abandoned.
The Philippine government has commenced a project to develop a locally designed and manufactured Automated Guideway Transit System (AGTS) through its Department of Science and Technology (DOST). Two prototype lines has been set up by the DOST, one within the University of the Philippines Diliman campus and another in Bicutan in Taguig.
Arthur Radford and Frederick Cooke, "A New Transportation System for the Automatic Handling of Bulk Materials and Supplies in Offshore and Underwater Environments", Offshore Technology Conference, 18–21 May 1969
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