Personal rapid transit (PRT), also referred to as podcars or guided/railed taxis, is a public transport mode featuring small 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.
The Tren Urbano is a 10.7-mile (17.2 km) fully-automated rapid transit system that serves the municipalities of San Juan, Guaynabo, and Bayamón, in Puerto Rico. The Tren Urbano consists of 16 stations operating on 10.7 miles (17.2 km) of track along a single line.
An automated guideway transit (AGT) or automated fixed-guideway transit or automatic quideway transit system is a type of fixed guideway transit infrastructure with a riding or suspesion 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.
The Jacksonville Skyway is an automated people mover in Jacksonville, Florida, United States, operated by the Jacksonville Transportation Authority (JTA). Opening in 1989 with three stations in Downtown Jacksonville, the Skyway was extended in 1996 following a conversion from its original technology to Bombardier Transportation equipment. It was expanded again in 1998 and 2000. The system currently comprises two routes across 2.5 miles (4.0 km) of track, serving eight stations, and crosses the St. Johns River on the Acosta Bridge. There is currently no fare to ride the Skyway, which had 1.2 million passengers in 2014.
Innovia Metro is an automated rapid transit system manufactured by Bombardier Transportation. 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 pulling on a "fourth rail" placed between the running rails. A new version of the technology being marketed by Bombardier is compatible with standard electric rotary propulsion.
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.
Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit is a personal rapid transit (PRT) system in Morgantown, West Virginia, United States. The system connects the three Morgantown campuses of West Virginia University (WVU) and the city's downtown area.
The Urban Transportation Development Corporation Ltd. (UTDC) was a Crown corporation owned by the Government of Ontario, Canada. It was established in the 1970s as a way to enter what was then expected to be a burgeoning market in advanced light rail mass transit systems. UTDC built a respected team of engineers and project managers. It developed significant expertise in linear propulsion, steerable trucks and driverless system controls which were integrated into a transit system known as the Intermediate Capacity Transit System (ICTS). It was designed to provide service at rider levels between a traditional subway on the upper end and buses and streetcars on the lower, filling a niche aimed at suburbs that were otherwise expensive to service.
The Charlotte Area Transit System (CATS) is the agency responsible for public transportation in the Charlotte metropolitan area. CATS operates bus and rail transit services in Mecklenburg County and surrounding areas. Established in 1999, CATS' bus and rail operations carry about 320,000 riders on an average week. CATS is governed by the Metropolitan Transit Commission and is operated as a department of the City of Charlotte.
Aramis is one of the title characters in the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père.
Ultra is a personal rapid transit podcar system developed by the British engineering company Ultra Global PRT.
The Algiers Metro is a rapid transit system that serves Algiers, the capital of Algeria. Originally designed in the 1970s, it opened in 2011 after decades of delays due to financial difficulties and security issues. The Algiers Metro was the second metro system to open in Africa, after the Cairo Metro.
Aramis, or the Love of Technology, was written by French sociologist/anthropologist Bruno Latour. Aramis was originally published in French in 1993; the English translation by Catherine Porter, copyrighted in 1996, ISBN 978-0-674-04323-7, is now in its fourth printing (2002). Latour describes his text as "scientifiction," which he describes as "a hybrid genre... for a hybrid task". The genre includes voices of a young engineer discussing his "sociotechnological initiation," his professor's commentary which introduces Actor-network theory (ANT), field documents - including real-life interviews, and the voice of Aramis—a failed technology.
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 HUD Reports were a series of studies in mass transit systems, funded by the Urban Mass Transportation Administration (UMTA) department of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The HUD reports were extremely influential in the development of the personal rapid transit (PRT) concept, small pod-like vehicles that automatically travel from point-to-point in extended networks. Their publication in early 1968 sparked off PRT development projects at dozens of companies around the world. In spite of intense interest in the early 1970s, political winds shifted and today there is only one HUD-inspired PRT system in commercial operation, the Morgantown PRT in West Virginia.
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.
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.
In the 1990s, the Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) planned to fund the construction of a personal rapid transit (PRT) system in Rosemont, Illinois. Raytheon had been contracted to build the system. The project was cancelled in October 1999. Rosemont had been selected in 1993 by the RTA be home to a demonstration PRT system. Five other municipalities in the suburban Chicago metropolitan area had submitted unsuccessful bids to be host to the PRT project. The system would have been the first-of-its-kind, utilizing smaller vehicles than the existing Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit. The project marked the first serious activity related to PRT construction since Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit.
