Ordinarily the light-rail-or-nothing segment of public transit supporters would lump PRT in with these new councilors. Key to the meme is the slate being backed by Kemper Freeman who, in the world of chat boards and comment threads, is the Snidley Whiplash of local transit because the car-loving developer is said to have been supportive of a University of Washington PRT study for the vicinity of his Bellevue properties.
That was 15 years ago. Today Freeman has zero involvement with PRT advocates in the Puget Sound region.
The way PRT is being approached today is as a complement other transit modes. True, many PRT advocates -- especially inventors with skin in the game -- have been known to paint grandiose visions of automated transit serving the whole of sprawling American cities. But that day is far, far off; the people planning PRT today are many of the same policy and engineering professionals responsible for our everyday bus and rail systems, not hardcore PRT advocates.
Thus, in this real world context, PRT could fill certain service or geographic niches without duplicating existing infrastructure investments. Even with PRT in the toolbox, the public policy priority for transit will continue to be the achievement of intermodality, balancing service with efficiency.
Because PRT is so flexible, and because our ultimate mission is to further the cause of transit, "Get On Board!PRT" endorses Sound Transit's East Link light rail corridor planning, including routing along 108th and 110th Avenue Northeast. We will support whatever final decision is made regarding at-grade or below grade alignment in that part of downtown Bellevue.
This month, the subject of Personal Rapid Transit has been broached in the Seattle Transit Blog in connection with their interview with Lee.
Lee's interest in PRT is vague as well as (if you palpate STB's editorial slant) apparently seeking to justify switching East Link to east of I-405, a shift dubbed the "Vision Line."
We cannot support Lee's very general idea about PRT, if he is using PRT as a way to justify the Vision Line.
The 2008 passage of Prop. 1 set East Link as a public policy and a multibillion dollar public investment, meaning there is going to be light rail on the Eastside. It is therefore paramount that East Link make the most of the investment, by directly serving the corridor's most popular and/or densest origins and destinations along the preferred alignment. For this reason we are also not enthusiastic about other alternatives on 114th NE or -- most horrifically -- through the Mercer Slough nature park.
No cable or canal-borne gondolas. No moving sidewalks, which are energy-wasteful because they must run all the time. And no PRT as a substitute for the downtown Bellevue alignment.
This does not mean PRT could not have some role to support East Link, which is clearly a commuter corridor. PRT's flexible network configuration could someday increase light rail ridership by acting as a collector-distributor, as well as providing local transit service.
As the PRT programs in Sweden and Masdar City make clear, there is no inherent incompatibility between PRT and conventional transit in the same service area, so long as their coexistence is planned to be complementary.
Elsewhere, we have suggested running light rail in a BART-like alignment in the I-90 corridor to North Bend, with PRT shuttling train riders to and from the route.
But that is just a suggestion and not part of the East Link plan. Sound Transit did not perform the PRT demonstration project named in the original 1996 Sound Move plan. Therefore the local design and planning that would be needed in order for PRT to be able to be part of any current Sound Transit project has not yet been performed. As the agency with purview on regional transit, any proposal to add PRT to the transit mix must occur within the Sound Transit planning system.
In addition, while there are several exciting PRT hardware programs abroad (ULTra, Vectus and 2getthere) it is not clear how soon those efforts will create a manufacturing base capable of providing a large urban or suburban system, and whether that capability will be reached within the time frame of East Link. And with certainty not if a U.S.-made PRT technology is desired.
PRT using an overseas technology could be ready in the short term to be implemented by forward-thinking private entities on the Eastside, in such applications as corporate campus circulation and Metro park & ride shuttles. ATS Ltd., maker of ULTra, has a U.S. office in Berkeley.
Real PRT is almost here. But barring something like a crash PRT program funded by the Recovery Act, it is still maybe 3-5 years too early for Puget Sound governments to contemplate PRT work other than planning efforts. Examples of planning efforts are the 1997 SeaTac study, and current projects in San Jose, CA and Ithaca, NY.
Updated Feb. 10, 2010
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