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Lifting the Potential of Public Transport By Lawrence J. Fabian Summary One objective for communities is the healthful functioning of commercial centers and other districts of density. Conventional public transport, although vital in many circumstances, does not provide attractive levels of service relative to the automobile. Recent advances in electronically smart transit technologies offer small-scale circulation with more attractive cost parameters. Automated People Movers (APMs) can be used to great advantage as integral elements in a superior city-building process and in management of parking supply. The safety and flexibility of driverless, fully automated guided transit systems are impressive. APMs in particular have outstanding promise for improving the functionalities of airport and rail station districts. If integrated with the institutional processes for regional land use planning and for urban infrastructure and commercial and residential architecture, APMs can attract critical volumes of street traffic off the road and make for more sustainable urban centers. The New Urban Order Urbanized areas have sprawled substantially in the last century. Prospects for continued growth and sprawl are strong. Moreover, decentralization in the age of the Internet is happening even in regions experiencing little overall growth. These trends raise concerns over further highway congestion, loss of open space, and the sufficiency of remaining land for food production, oxygen replenishment, and other aspects of environmental quality. These problems are real and deserve immediate attention. They imply the need for sound land management and urban density policies and for an elemental rethinking the process of city-building.
The need for parking tends to displace more desirable land uses around stations. Image by Lawrence Fabian. The location of stations on major rail lines exercises a strong impact on where businesses and households choose to locate. However, they also generate and attract much traffic. Unless districts around stations are well managed, they tend to become over-congested, undesirable places. These trends towards lower densities and sprawl are largely in response to reliance on road vehicles as the dominant mode of transport and unmanaged parking in centers. Moreover, the telecommunications revolution increasingly makes us less dependent on one location. We increasingly move here and there as "urban nomads." Once a citizen has a car at his or her disposal, the need to park that vehicle makes decisions to go somewhere else by public means unviable. Having a variety of non-central destinations makes public transport impractical. Here are two contending forces acting on districts of density that need sound policies to bring them into balance or equilibrium. On the one hand, we as a species need to gather in large numbers in districts of density. On the other, as individuals, we each prefer to travel by car, generating congestion, acres of alienating parking lots, and sprawled cities with fewer opportunities for healthy public gatherings. How does the planner strike a balance between these centripetal (inward, toward the center) and centrifugal (outward, away from the center) forces? What alternatives are there? How good can public transport be as a means for people to get to the district, and to move about within it? Definition and Overview of APMs Recent advances made by the Automated People Mover (APM) industry provide the ability to create superior mobility services relative to conventional mass transit by buses, subways, and trams. An APM is defined as a system of passenger transport in which driverless vehicles are guided by modern communications and controls over exclusive guideways.1
Left — APMs are often found at airports, where their quiet, reliable services become an integral part of a large complex, as illustrated here for Tampa. Image courtesy of Hillsborough County Aviation Authority. Removing the need for labor in each vehicle or train of vehicles transforms the economics of providing service. Smaller vehicles — or trains of vehicles — can be economically run more frequently. It also means that a small APM can be more readily financially justifiable due to low investment costs.
Right — PRT (short for personal rapid transit) is the ultimate APM,
taking automation to its logical conclusion that taxi-like service can be provided
economically over an entire network. The red line represents the core system.
The blue line represents flexible growth. Image by Lawrence Fabian.
Overall, there are 109 APMs in operation around the world.3 They divide into four types of installations. The mass transit projects described above make up only one-fourth of the total. Another quarter are within airports, offering efficient new ways to configure and interconnect expanding terminal and other landside facilities. Almost 30 airport APMs currently operate, and there are 10 more underway. Dozens more are in various stages of planning and engineering. There are many APM plans in districts of density — such as medical campuses (Huntsville Hospital, Clarian Health in Indianapolis), universities (Old Dominion University in Norfolk), and entertainment districts (Las Vegas, Niagara Falls). Left — The Meteor in Paris is a fully automated, driverless metro line with very high capacity. Another quarter are in leisure centers: zoos, casinos, amusement parks, exposition centers, and other resorts. Many are light of scale, slow in speed, and partially operated by guides. Unfortunately, transit professionals typically dismiss them as inapplicable to the greater rigors of urban mass transit. However, there are many impressive features on several installations at Nevada casinos and in several indoor tour rides opened recently in northern Europe. This is an impressive body of expertise that can be applied in urban settings. Finally, over two dozen APMs today operate in a variety of institutional settings. This includes universities, hospitals, shopping malls, and redevelopment authorities that own and operate a driverless passenger conveyance. Each one has many unique features that are beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice it to say the urban planners today have a variety of new mobility options. Like all transport, APMs can alter the time-space environment in which urban activities function. Recent Trends in APMs Planning The mainstream of the U.S. mass transit industry is not well attuned to the safety, reliability, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness of driverless metros. With the exception of the above-cited report, the Brussels-based UITP has not adopted an explicit policy to encourage the implementation of driverless metros. In the United States, the American Public Transportation Association (APTA) had a Committee on Automated Guideway Transit in the 1970s. After inactivity in the 1980s, it was revived in the mid-1990s and now exists on the periphery of mainstream APTA activities as a "technical forum" under the Committee on Rapid Transit. Despite the pervasive professional disinterest in APMs on the part of most transit officials, there are several new driverless metro projects currently underway overseas. Projects recently opened in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Rennes, France. Others are underway in Italy, Greece, Singapore, and Korea. Closer to home, a private venture in Las Vegas is expanding and upgrading a monorail link into a driverless line-haul system down the hyper-dense hotel and casino strip district that is the economic core of the fast-growing region.4 APM service is more frequent, more dependable, and safer. Modestly scaled APMs can be designed to circulate passengers from a regional rail station into a local district. Several function like this in Japan. London, Singapore, and Miami have similar APM configurations. Airport APMs also link to nearby rail stations in Dusseldorf (Germany), Birmingham (U.K), and Newark. They will soon do so in New York at JFK Airport. There are interesting plans for Providence's TF Green Airport in the town of Warwick. APMs can enhance the connection between air and regional rail networks and make overall travel by public transport more attractive. As mentioned earlier, some APMs are designed to provide relatively low-cost and low-capacity links across short distances. These shuttles can be also used to extend the reach of rail stations. One example is north of Boston, Massachusetts, where a 250-meter shuttle runs from a rapid transit station to a large parking garage. A second can be found in Milan, Italy, where a 680-meter shuttle, opened in 1999 to connect a hospital to parking and a metro station. Another is being built outside Lisbon, Portugal.
Left — The APM shuttle at an intermodal center near a regional rail station north of Boston effectively extends the service area of that station. Image by Lawrence Fabian. APM Industry Trends
Right — This test track of a now-inactive PRT development program illustrates the taxi-like service of the concept. Image courtesy of Raytheon Company. The expanding airport market for APMs already referred to gives an economic reality to the industry that did not exist a few years ago. In other words, there is now a regular meeting of buyers and sellers of APM systems so that a market can be said to exist. Prominent suppliers include Alstom, Ansaldo, Bombardier (which recently acquired ADtranz), Doppelmayr, Intamin, Kawasaki, Kobe Steel, Mitsubishi, Poma-Otis, and Siemens (which now fully owns Matra Transport). There are others with impressive APM accomplishments, but less recognition. Project planners can expect to be able to procure safe, reliable and affordable APM services in ways that were not possible a decade ago. Over the last few years, several APM suppliers have merged or been bought out by others. For example, Pomagalski and Otis now work together, and Leitner has purchased Pomagalski. What is clear is that a market with multiple suppliers exists. Moreover, most APM companies are very international in both makeup and outlook. It is truly a global industry increasingly able to respond to project needs around the world. At the same time, progress is being made toward the standardization of many aspects of APM definitions and specifications. In parallel to these processes and based on a growing number of private sector projects, there is a clear trend toward fast, flexible turnkey delivery of systems. Small installations can be designed, installed and put into service in less than a year. Moreover, APM suppliers typically are engaged to provide O&M services for the systems that they install. Thus, public and private officials who wish to build an APM can rely on the expertise of suppliers not only to engineer and manufacture APM components, but also to integrate them on site, ready them for certification and public operation, and maintain them in commercial use as well. Implications Most project planning today proceeds without an appreciation of APMs. As has been noted above, it is peripheral to the current agenda of most of the mass transit industry. Likewise, it is perhaps even more unknown to architects, building inspectors and zoning officials. Each of the 109 operating APMs has a story of its own, where ad hoc arrangements were made to approve, certify, and monitor its safety.
There is a great need for objective planning information about APMs. The potential gains in urban efficiency and environmental quality from public transport enhanced by APM technologies are substantial. Unfortunately, there are few textbooks and guidelines for professionals working in the planning, engineering, and architectural aspects of APMs. Left — Intermodal links from line-hail transit can be integrated into
district development schemes. Image by Lawrence Fabian.
In conclusion, planners today have an array of attractive new mobility tools for providing quality links between buildings, configuring land uses in dense districts, supplying attractive circulation services, and managing parking resources. Right — APM stations are well integrated into terminal buildings at
Orlando Airport. Image by Lawrence Fabian. About the Author
1. The term guideway is used instead of track because some APM vehicles are rubber-tired, air-floated, or magnetically levitated. 2. "A Better Quality at the Lowest Cost: Driverless Metros (International Union for Public Transport [UITP], Brussels, 1997). This is also summarized in "The Exceptional Service of Driverless Metros" by Lawrence J. Fabian in the Journal of Advanced Transportation, Vol. 33, No. 1 (University of Calgary, Canada, spring 1999). 3. Source: the semi-official annual inventory by Trans.21 (PO Box 249, Boston, MA 02122 USA), Spring 2001. 4. Detailed information on this project is available in the September 2002 issue of Mass Transit (Cygnus Publishing: Ft. Atkinson, Wis.). 5. Orlando Airport is described in "Passenger Priority," Passenger Terminal World (UIP: Surrey, U.K.), April 1999; and in "Orlando: The Airport's Worth the Trip," Movers (A+M Publishing: Surrey, UK), Winter 1999. 6. To learn more, visit www.apmstandards.org. 7. Visit www.apm2003.com.sg. October 2002 | |
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How
large should our cities be, and where should growth be encouraged? How should
they be configured? At what densities should our neighborhoods, cultural, commercial
and other specialized districts be built? The lower the density, the more land
is required for urban development. How then can we reduce the real and perceived
disadvantages of higher densities? Smart Growth calls for them to be transit,
pedestrian and biker friendly. Convenient alternatives to the car should be
provided. Parking should be rationalized and managed to help decongest centers.
These measures will make dense districts more environmentally sustainable as
well as encourage the health benefits of walking and the social and psychological
benefits of spontaneous interactions among its citizens.
There
are no vehicle or train drivers, nor is staff required at stations. Supervisory
staff is located in a control center, where system-wide, real-time information
on vehicle movements and other operating conditions is instantly available to
them. In some cases, staff is deployed in trains — usually roaming through
them and stations as highly visible public attendants for informational, security
and fare-checking purposes.
Large
APMs can and do function well as driverless metros. Accumulating experience
has led prominent transit experts to recognize these advantages.
Elsewhere,
there are six driverless transit installations of smaller dimensions and capacities,
often feeding large conventional rail stations. There are also nine fully automated
urban installations that have vehicle attendants. Details of the experience
will be discussed in the next section.
Research
and developmental work (R&D) is working toward higher-level APMs with nonstop
service among any pair of stations within an extended network. This is called
Personal Rapid Transit, or PRT for short, and it is akin to an automated taxi
service. No true PRTs are in operation. A still dependable prototype has been
in service at West Virginia University since the 1970s. Although the economics
of PRT have yet to prove themselves, few transport engineers doubt that this
small-vehicle APM configuration with off-line stations is technically feasible.
A demonstration project is underway in Wales, and R&D programs are active
in the U.S. and Australia.
In
summary, APM services can make public transport significantly more attractive
and economical than the buses and trains that make up the world of mass transit.
APM engineering standards have been written, and accumulating operation experience
is encouraging. How can unfamiliar and sophisticated equipment be confidently
procured and put into service? What training and technical skills are required?
What are the trends in the supply of APMs and their operation and maintenance
(O&M)?
Architects
and planners are just now beginning to recognize the possibilities to integrate
APM stations into buildings. Guideways and their stations have relatively small
dimensions. Vibration and noise are minimal. Integrating guideways and stations
into larger urban buildings and complexes is feasible. Orlando Airport stands
out as an especially aesthetic example of this,
The
American Society of Civil Engineers is widely recognized as the principal repository
of APM expertise. The ASCE is the secretariat for the APM Standards Committee,
which is completing a consensual process for "voluntary" standards
for APM.
