The Los Angeles City Council will focus tomorrow on the city's transportation crisis. Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, Chair of the Transportation committee, requested feedback on the city's "transportation vision." Roy Reynolds, Managing Director of PRT Strategies, responded in a letter published in CityWatch:
Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) technology has matured from its first implementa-tions in the 1970s and is ready for wider deploy-ment, possibly as early as 2010. We can best introduce this technology to you via the attached treatment we’d done last month in response to MTA’s request for comments re. the downtown Connector Study. PRT is a reasonable elevated solution for this application, and many others in the City.
It’s time to consider a high-tech solution to LA’s traffic problems. The first phase of your project seeks goals and objectives and it’s time for a new approach – that is, unconventional but achievable solutions, utilization of all available RoWs, computerization and dealing with freight cartage where PRT can be applied.
The first initial impression of PRT is that it cannot deal with heavy passenger volumes. With study and understanding, and simple mathematical projections, PRT can readily match standard bus and rail capacities given 1) that hundreds of vehicles can operate on its trackways with VERY short “headways” – perhaps as minimal as one second separations, and 2) that PRT is NOT a linearly-oriented system – it’s infrastructure is far more useful and flexible if multiple networked paths are built between stations.
PRT stations can also be built INTO structures, acting as second floor in-building portals. This leads us to the potential for public/private partnerships – a currently popular strategy in dealing with large civic expenditures. In this example, the property value of a structure is increased, and PRT becomes appealing to a middle-class demographic when it’s realized that a private and secure ride can be had on demand to/from home or office.
Links: Letter in CityWatch | PRT Strategies
0 comments:
Post a Comment