(The following article by Tom Hester Jr. was posted on the Trenton Times website on September 27.)
TRENTON, N.J. — Imagine walking into a modern transit station, swiping a prepaid card and easing into an egg-shaped vehicle that zips away on a fixed track 20 feet above the street.
Reaching speeds as high as 50 mph, the pod, which offers a private ride, cruises without a driver to a selected station without stopping. Once there, the hatch opens and the passenger hops out, leaving the vehicle behind for the next person to come along for his computer-automated trip.
If this sounds all too futuristic, something out of a “Star Wars” movie or a “Jetsons” cartoon, well, it is.
A so-called personal rapid transit (PRT) system has never been built, and previous attempts to do so have failed amid ballooning costs and logistical obstacles, but New Jersey lawmakers want the state to jump aboard in case the technology offers their congested state a new transit alternative to cars, buses and trains.
“We need to have it looked at as to how it would work in New Jersey,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Sayreville.
Wisniewski is chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, which unanimously voted recently to release a bill Wisniewski sponsored that would authorize spending $75,000 to study whether the Garden State would be ripe for a PRT system.
Wisniewski said the “technology holds the promise of being able to provide an efficient, cost-effective solution to our state’s transportation problems.”
“There is no doubt that New Jersey needs to examine carefully every possibility for enhancing our current rapid transit systems and alleviating congestion on our roads,” he said.
But as lawmakers propose spending public money to study PRT, doubters remain.
“PRT is a fantasy,” said Randal O’Toole of The Thoreau Institute in Oregon, which analyzes public policy. “Or rather, we already have it. It is called the automobile. We have spent trillions on infrastructure for the auto. To make PRT work, we would have to spend trillions on infrastructure for a system that will still not be as good as the auto.”
Bruce Nesbitt Haydu, president of Atlantic SkyWeb, the company that is marketing the PRT system developed by a Minnesota firm, said the system could be built, among other places, in Newark, Atlantic City, Long Branch and at the proposed Xanadu complex at the Meadowlands.
Atlantic SkyWeb, which markets PRT for the technology owner, Taxi 2000, of Fridley, Minn., has plans for a 2.8-mile system in Long Branch to connect that community’s train station, business district and oceanfront.
A PRT system, Haydu said, would merge the “best of the automobile and of public transportation.”
“It’s quick and easy to build, low-cost,” he said.
Haydu said PRT can be built for $8 million to $10 million per mile.
Yet, the Long Branch proposal would cost about $50 million for about three miles. Haydu said that’s because it would be the first one. He said costs would drop as more systems are built.
The River Line, the 34-mile light-rail train that links Trenton and Camden, cost $32.4 million per mile. However, its much-criticized $1.1 billion price tag includes the cost of rail cars and rebuilding existing track.
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Essentially, the PRT system would involve three-person vehicles that would use linear induction motors to run on elevated guideways. Linear induction motors use electricity to propel an object in a straight line. They don’t use fuel directly, so the system itself is emissions-free.
The 7-foot-wide guideways would be built in a network similar to the current roadway network but would be free from traffic jams and accidents, proponents say.
Enough vehicles would be supplied so ones would be waiting at each station, which would be built off the main line. Passengers would get into the pods, merge onto the main line and head to the destination. Since stations are off the main guideway, the vehicles wouldn’t stop at each station, like trains.
“The vehicles are waiting for passengers,” Haydu said. “This is not scheduled service. It is on-demand.”
The system would run 24 hours per day, with the stations built about every half-mile. Haydu said poles would have to be placed about every 90 feet, but otherwise the infrastructure wouldn’t be disruptive.
“The elevated guideway is unobtrusive and out-of-the-way,” he said.
During the Assembly hearing, legislators expressed their support for the concept but cited concerns about costs and logistics – the same concerns that have plagued the concept since President Nixon proposed it 30 years ago.
Two systems have been built on test guideways, one in Wales and the other in Fridley, Minn.
Plans to build systems in Chicago, Cincinnati and Santa Cruz, Calif., were dropped after costs increased. Cincinnati’s projected costs ended up being six times the original estimate. Chicago’s project increased to $50 million per mile, more than twice the first estimate.
“It became too expensive and they couldn’t justify it,” said Joseph DiJohn, professor at the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois of Chicago.
The Minnesota Legislature considered appropriating $4 million for a PRT testing facility, but the plan was nixed amid concerns it wasn’t a wise use of scarce transit money.
Morgantown, W.Va., aimed to construct a system in the late 1970s to link West Virginia University campuses but ended up with huge cost overruns and what essentially became an automated bus system, with eight-person vehicles that run on rubber tires on a concrete guideway.
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Among other concerns about PRT are whether an elevated guideway will be visually disruptive and whether it can withstand harsh weather.
O’Toole, though, said people won’t want to give up their privately owned cars for commonly used vehicles they have to walk to get to.
“People drive because cars can take them from door to door when they want to go,” he said. “Plus they allow for trip chaining, i.e., multiple stops in one trip. A startup PRT system would only serve a tiny percentage of people in any urban area. Even after the system was entirely built out, most people would have to walk two or more blocks at one or both ends of their trips. This means PRT will not be competitive with cars.”
The cost to build a PRT system, he said, “would be enormous.”
“The solution to congestion is electronic tolls that vary with the amount of congestion,” O’Toole said. “Other technological solutions, such as cars that can detect a vehicle ahead and slow down – already available on luxury cars – and cars that can steer themselves, will also reduce congestion.”
He said one study found that having just 20 percent of the cars on the road automatically decrease and increase speed in response to the vehicles ahead can significantly reduce congestion.
“Will people ever give up their cars?” he asked. “Most European countries heavily tax autos and fuel, yet people there drive for 78 percent of their travel. We drive for 86 percent of our travel. Not much different.”
Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, D-South Orange, said he didn’t know if the system would work but said New Jersey, as the nation’s most congested state, should consider it.
“It’s something worth exploring,” he said.
The bill would require the state Transportation Department, in consultation with NJ Transit, to study PRT and assess whether it would be viable for the state. The report is due within one year of the bill’s passage and it would consider whether PRT could reduce traffic congestion, how much it might cost and how it would compare to traditional rail and light-rail.
The bill’s Senate version hasn’t received a hearing, but lawmakers were hopeful the concept will get consideration.
“If there’s ever a state that is crying out for this project, this advanced science, it is New Jersey,” Assemblyman Kevin O’Toole, R-Cedar Grove, said.