While the idea of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) may be on the back burner for now for Alameda Point and SunCal, another Bay Area city is seriously looking into the possibility of introducing PRT to connect the city to various business centers, transportation hubs, hotels, and of course, the airport. But it’s mostly just to connect the airport.
Yes, San Jose, is seriously looking into PRT. From KGO (video!):
…[Laura Stuchinksy sustainability officer for San Jose's Department of Transportation] and other city officials are considering the idea of having such a public pod system link the Mineta San Jose International Airport with area businesses, hotels and other nearby transit options, like Caltrain, BART and the VTA Light Rail.
…
The city is in the exploratory stages of a public-private partnership, reviewing proposals from 18 companies from Silicon Valley and around the world…
San Jose is anticipating population growth of a half million people over the next 30 years, so an automated pod transit system could certainly improve quality of life in the city – plus generate thousands more clean-tech jobs — an opportunity that the JPods company is vying for:
“We’ll do it on our nickel. We’ll build this on private capital. We just need right-of-way,” said Bill James, JPods.
That’s right, the Jpod folks have said they would be willing to build the San Jose PRT on their own “nickle” all they would need is the right of way. If course, San Jose doesn’t have our issues to deal with such as an estuary, etc…
In other PRT news, the PRT system in Heathrow is fully constructed and they have begun running tests on the full track to launch the system fall 2009. Some photos from conception to construction of the Heathrow PRT.
Just curious, and this only occurred to me recently: How was the PRT in Alameda going to deal with the overhead utilities along its route? Does SJ have the same issues?
Comment by AD — December 22, 2008 @ 10:26 am
The initially planned route (p. 56, yellow route) would have run on streets with overhead power lines that are very very high (or streets that have undergrounded power like Webster), as someone mentioned previously, I think on Stop, Drop & Roll, the ULTra PRT has the ability to run at grade as well as elevated.
Comment by Lauren Do — December 22, 2008 @ 11:12 am
In dreams, it can run at any grade level.
Comment by dave — December 22, 2008 @ 12:29 pm
(chuckling at Dave’s comment)
In the video that SunCal uses in its presentation they show the “PRT” to be a regular bus with a dedicated lane. So no overhead.
I don’t think they have that video posted where everyone else can see it.
But dreams do come true if you dream hard enough…
Comment by Edmundo Delmundo — December 22, 2008 @ 1:50 pm
Lauren, would you expect the PRT to go over or under the estuary?
Comment by Jack B. — December 22, 2008 @ 1:52 pm
Edmundo, the video you are referring to was the bus rapid transit(BRT), which is distinct from the PRT (need a scorecard for all the acronyms)
Comment by notadave — December 22, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
How about running the PRT down Railroad Ave (aka Lincoln) to the Fruitvale BART station. Similar to the old Souther Pacific route in Alameda.
Comment by John Oldham — December 22, 2008 @ 2:14 pm
Hello Again All,
Like Pacino in Godfather III, you’ve pulled me back in again!!
Anyway, wrt Utility lines – many PRT designs make allowances for cableways in or under their guideways for running power & communications cables.
Moving cables to allow for a PRT system provides phone & cable companies the golden opportunity to upgrade their infrastructure from copper to fiber, benefiting the whole community.
Of course, I don’t expect either phone or cable companies to do ANYTHING for their own benefit or that of the community without making someone PAYS to make that happen – just too many years under the Bush Administration for that to happen.
Comment by Sidewinder — December 22, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
Why would our utility companies want to pay for someone else’s benefit? Wouldn’t re-routing of power, data, and communication cable be part of the cost of PRT system construction costs? It would not benefit existing utilities – their cables are already working where they are. Sounds to me like Sidewinder just wants to dream of working ‘on someone else’s dime”
Comment by David Kirwin — December 23, 2008 @ 9:07 am
“Why would our utility companies want to pay for someone else’s benefit? ”
Merry Christmas to you too, Kirwin!
Who do you think is benefiting here, Mr Scrooge? It’s YOUR COMMUNITY that benefits.
Yes, the cost of rerouting is part of PRT construction costs – I never said it wasn’t – instead I pointed out that the issue was anticipated & there were benefits to be realized:
1) PRT guideways are often designed with to allow for cableways that accommodate power & data cables, thus eliminating the blight of overhead power, telephone & tv cabling, while providing the utilies with a much less expensive alternative to burying their cables (which many communities may mandate for aesthetic reasons).
2) Your utilities might take advantage of a mandated move to upgrade to fiber optic cables which are lighter, less expensive & have vastly improved capacity compared to copper (and they can sell off the copper for its scrap value).
Those are just a couple of additional benefits you could get to go along with the fast, convenient, on-demand Transportation service that PRT would provide.
Anything else you’d like to whine & moan about?
Comment by Sidewinder — December 23, 2008 @ 6:41 pm
Sidewinder, PRT is still your pipe dream – not mine. It has never been recognized as realistic or cost effective anywhere – for any city of any size – no city at all! The single use in the world has yet to be realized. (One airport its parking lot with no seismic issues or CA EPA issues) Even if it was a dream we wanted to chase there is no money for it, and there is no right of way to any helpful place. Mostly we are too in debt to take on such projects, and we have yet to see the promises of other developers come to fruition, who trusts developers? Not to mention Alameda had once before “up-graded to fiber optic cables which are lighter, less expensive & has vastly improved capacity compared to copper”, but we had to tear out the island-wide fiber optic system because despite all the promises and rhetoric, the project planners screwed that one up as well. You have to remember that Alameda has had it’s share of “dream chasing”, and each time the people of the city were awakened by the fact that reality did not meet the claims projected despite “real guarantees” it would work out fine, like AP&T’s “firewall from tel-com debt”.
I won’t whine and moan if you return the $65 – $90 Million loss we’re facing on the last bright idea that couldn’t fail.
Any more false hopes and dreams you trying to sell?
Comment by David Kirwin — December 23, 2008 @ 10:57 pm
One thing is sure, Kirwin, you have to hire competent people to do the job, not just the lowest bidder.
That sounds like your experience with fiber & That has been the history of PRT projects in America.
The contracts are always given to “Transit” companies whose experience with Rail is completely inapplicable for PRT. They then design a system that is too big, too heavy & too expensive. But hey, “parts is parts” & “transit is transit”, right?
Sorry to hear about your bad experience with fiber; ever since Bushco got hired to rape this country, one area of particular shennanigans has been telco/cable, with the established players using every dirty trick in the book to shut out the start-ups & little guys.I watched ATG go belly-up in Santa Rosa because AT&T used every means at their disposal, honest & not-so-honest, to deny the use of what was supposed to be shared infrastructure.
I don’t have your 90 mill so, if you’re gonna whine & moan, do it about bad/unethical businesses & management. You’ll have my ear & my sympathy.
But talk about new ideas as though they are the enemy (on the internet yet)& you’ve lost me.
Comment by Sidewinder — December 23, 2008 @ 11:32 pm
Sidewinder-
You’ve touched a number of real issues, but first (and foremost for me) I am ALWAYS in favor of talking about new ideas – on the internet or elsewhere. That’s really what we NEED more of, and not just talk, but we also need to make sure that money spent, & action taken is beneficial not detrimental.
From what I have seen of the PRT proposals for Alameda – It is not worth pursuing.
In concept I am not against examining how a PRT system might someday be a benefit to society, but beginning with basics; how can it serve all without exclusion, and still be safe and socially accepted?
I still believe the preferred PRT is and will continue to be the ‘automobile’ but in a modified format. (much smaller, ultra-lightweight, alternative powered, more ‘shared’ ownership,…)
On a larger word-view, I also think our communities will need to be more fully self-sustaining, not just in housing: jobs but also in energy and food production, and attitudes based less on consuming cheap, short-lived products, thus less reliance of heavy transportation needs. Of course there are heavy world economic repercussions, and in a way WE ALL (globally speaking) sorta need to ‘pass go’ together.
There often seems to be a public project competency problem, but usually that is because of the competency of the bid writing side, the selection process, and the work oversight, rather than the laws regarding the selection process. “Lowest competent bidder” is different from” lowest bid”. On some recent projects AUSD rejected all bids because they all came in ‘too low’! I heard that from a sales person of one of the international companies involved who learned there was a couple $100k more on the table and they would re-submit a new bid. I admit I don’t know much about that situation, but I will have to remember to try to investigate that further. In all public construction projects, if the contract going to bid was written well, and there is competent project management including quality certification of each step of each phase, there would be fewer surprises post job completion/acceptance, when it is difficult to get contractors back to fix things. A little ‘warranty work’ can lead to major complications and a lot of finger-pointing and little corrective action without further bleeding of the public dollars.
Transportation of course is a key ingredients in our future development as it has been for every stage of development in human history. Usually development has followed the path that the means-of-transportations established, whether by ship, animal, rail, wheel, or wing.
(I am still unclear as to why all the local rail systems were torn apart and dismantled.)
The current regional transportation infrastructure is at, or near capacity, certainly here in Alameda, where ‘we’ have more of a ‘stake’ as ‘stakeholders’.
I have serious issues with the ideas and over-riding concept of our Transportation Commission – that Alameda must coerce citizens to use the bus system by making our roadways less beneficial to drivers – by narrowing roads, allowing bottlenecks, and favoring additional development which will worsen problems.
(If their purview is ‘transportation’ they should recognize that any new major west end development MUST include an additional estuary crossing that would be used by the same number of west enders that would otherwise clot our existing crossings)
I appreciate the TC’s efforts toward recommending improved bike accessibility, and improved bus service, but their actions like the Transportation Element are directed toward changing Alameda – growing the number residing in Alameda, not protecting Alameda’s transportation abilities which should be the primary purpose of that commission. Their actions speak of a desire to be the political pet with condescending approval of an amped up Alameda Development Dept that is hurting our community. Thjis is currently the most troubling aspect of Alameda, bar none.
I wish you all a Merry, Happy Holiday Season, and best luck to us all in the new year.
Comment by David Kirwin — December 24, 2008 @ 12:34 pm