CITY BUILDING WITH MODERN TRANSIT

Las Vegas is a city built on gambling. That includes the developers, especially the casino folks who have created a world-famous  array of mega-resorts up and down the Strip. Several have APM shuttles built in the 1990s.

As the 21^st century opened, MGM Mirage gambled when it unveiled a $7 billion project in 2005 for a large site between the old downtown (vintage casinos) and the newer, bolder and bigger Strip.  With name architects and huge ambitions, the project included a $11 million cable-powered APM by Austria’s Doppelmayr and Siemens. This huge real estate gamble was named CityCenter.  Midtown may be a more appropriate label.

Light and open, the APM station has a playful design.

This Vegas city-building gamble dove right into the 2008/9 mini-depression that rocked the world, especially speculative con-struction such as abounds in Arizona, Florida and Las Vegas. The good news is that the project continued and is alive today. The ARIA Express Tram opened in 2009.

Urban Perspectives

Early APMs within resort properties and at the airport were mostly back-and-forth shuttles.  Circus-Circus had two -- one has been dismantled and the other mothballed.  Others still operate at Treasure Island, Excalibur and the Mirage. The ugly elevated, automated monorail stands apart a long way back from the Strip, largely irrelevant except to conventioneers, waiting in vain for extension to the airport.

Ezra Larsen managed the ARIA Tram

Today, Las Vegas’s visitor-based economy is almost back up to where it was in 2007. The 3-station CityCenter APM hums 24/7 carrying about 9000 passengers a day.  Current owner Aria is reluctant to give out sales and occupancy data. In early April, the shops were bright. Visitors wondered about impressed. It looks like this APM gamble is paying off.

In the 1990s Raytheon tried to advance podcar concepts in Las Vegas but got nowhere.  Who will light the PRT torch in 2016?

ROBOCAR DOMAINS

Urban policy makers face a new set of questions these days. Frequent requests for drones and robocars are coming at them. This is terra incognito. They have no experience with driverless street delivery of pizza, fuel oil or people.

An official classification of levels of vehicle automation was published by NHTSA in 2013. “Level X automation” is now commonly heard in professional and commercial discussions and publications.

Do we need guideways to serve  auto-oriented districts?

Yet we lack classification of the complexity in which vehicle automation is to take place. This confuses discussions as ITS engineers deal with not just of vehicle-to-vehicle communications, but more importantly with vehicle-to-infrastructure exchanges and infrastructure-to-vehicles.

Levels of Vehicle Automation

Smart infrastructure will determine the future of roadway safety and security oversight. It will communicate with algorithms that reside in a remote center (maybe the cloud). It is helpful to create a comparable categorization of the two-dimensional, geographic areas or domains over which robocars will operate.

NHTSA’s scheme for robocars ranges from Level-0 for the millions of vehicles driven over today’s freeways, highways, arterials, local streets, alleys, parking areas, driveways and sometimes places they shouldn’t go. Level-1 brings in some driving functions, such as cruise control and park assist.  L-2 is fancier. L-3 lets the system takes control, but depends on drivers to intervene when necessary. L-4 takes it all the way up to full driverless mode.

For owners and operators of L-3 and L-4 vehicles, the domains over which they run becomes critical.

Levels of Geographic Extent: Domain

Managers of private campuses (university, medical, corporate, etc.) of not more than a few square miles don’t have to worry about state-to-state differences. In fact, they probably have pretty full control over their own property. A fleet of robocars that goes no faster than 20 mph will do just fine. There is no need to put them out on the busy highways or public streets. They remain on campus roads, paths and parking lots. This is Level-0 of robocar domains.

How large a service area for robocars?

A municipal service may stay within its corporate boundaries overseen by one police unit and served by one DPW department. That is Level-3. Level-1 is over a small domain such as metro-feeding service limited to, say, a mile out. Level-2 is with a well-defined district. A transit authority would likely require metropolitan-scaled services: Level 4. Larger regions stretching across states are Level 5.

Clearly robocar safety and control requirements are tied to the size and complexity of the domain. Asking good questions about the service domain may be a key to finding the right answers of how to deploy and oversee them.

A Domain Classification

To repeat and further define, the categories off Robocar Context to can help advance conversations are:

                0   Secured, managed private or semi-private campuses

                1   Supervised activity centers, probably mixed land uses that rely in part on public streets

                2   Urban districts with firm boundaries (physical or by policy) with residential and/or employment populations of, say, 5000 to 50,000

                3   An entire city - central or suburban - but within the jurisdiction of a single legal entity or municipality, aka City Hall

                4   A metropolitan area with populations of, say, 0.1-10 million

                5   A very large metropolitan or inter-regional with significant long-distance trips (over ~10 miles).

In a few decades, policy makers may want to think about a sea-to-sea domain as the 6^th and international as the 7^th levels.

To restate visually, the array of robocars in different domains is:

	Context Scale	0	1	2	3	4	5
Veh Smarts
	0
	1
	2
	3
	4

MILLENIAL OUTLOOK

Young adults look at the world they are inheriting, frustrated by congestion and the high costs of keeping a car. Many try to get along without one. They value having the right device with cool apps to summon a ride without owning a car. They scope out Uber, Lyft, Vulog and others leading a global transformation of urban mobility.

Marcus Sharpe (right) learning about podcars in 2014.

Transit and other public officials seem -- if not oblivious -- bewildered by the new economics of mobility. “Why are we holding on to the old technologies of the 20^th century?” questions Marcus Sharpe in freeway-jammed Atlanta. To him, transit officials seem wedded to the past, unable to even think about modern modes to link up urban nodes better. He sees how sleek, high-service transit networks can be envisioned, not just lines.  

The Old Guard

Unfortunately Baruch Feigenbaum of Reason Foundation did not in 2013 when he proudly presented a plan to eliminate chronic congestion that costs Metro Atlanta drivers $1100 a year.  A 2010 plan by consultants HNTB has meant that highway and transit systems have failed to keep pace with north Georgia growth.

Does MARTA not care enough to see
the logic of enhanced TOD?

Reason’s plan tries to update and move on, mostly by  recommending new self-financing “dynamic lanes” and shifting transit funding from Georgia DOT to the Department of Community Affairs. Claiming to look out 30 years, the plan doesn’t even mention shared use, “smart TOD” or PRT -- the “untried” mode that excites Marcus and many of his cohorts.

Freed from 20^th century baggage, Millennials look at urban living with fresh eyes. One calculates that putting a dollar more tax on gas would be an easy, revenue-generating measure that would very quickly reduce traffic. “Dude, is it the same people blocking the metric system?”

Millennials bubble with new ideas for tackling the problems of the world. It’s time for aging Boomers to shake loose of the 20^th Century!

ROBOCAR CONTEXT

The surging wave of R&D into smarter and smarter road vehicles is proceeding within an official classification of levels of vehicle automation. However, it lacks a comparable categorization of the roads on which they are to operate.

Reducing accident cost and fatalities is
a driving force for robocars.

Asking the right questions is often the key to finding the right answer. How we think about something determines what kind of answers we get. Robocars are still an amorphous concept in a state of flux. Let’s think more about their context -- or more appropriately, their contexts.

Focus on Vehicles

The US Government’s National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) in 2013 published a policy framework defining five levels of vehicle automation:

            0   None -- driver in full control

                1   Function Specific -- automated braking, cruise control, etc.

                2   Combined Functions -- two or more driving functions work synergistically, e.g. cruise control and lane                                         centering

                3   Limited Self-Driving -- driver cedes controls under certain conditions

                4   Full Self-Driving -- the robocar of our dreams and/or nightmares

This heuristic classification framework has become part of the vocabulary of engineers and commercial entrepreneurs working on the many public and private programs to design, prototype, test and implement robocars. It helps them communicate the technical subtleties that often escape casual participants in professional and public conversations. As such, it facilitates communication. It is a useful intellectual tool that helps a society’s progress.

Enter the Context

Today we hear about “smart cars in smart cities” still not knowing precisely what the second half of the term means. What is a smart city? In 2013 MIT’s Technology Review with electric vehicles in mind offered this:  “In a smart city, every electric vehicle must have access to a charging station within its driving range.”

Since then we have witnessed remarkable progress in robotic sensor and visioning systems. Public officials who deal with the public realm are joining conversations with individuals and corporations focused on individual vehicles. Cutting-edge thinkers are exploring visions of a smart city where electronic markers dot the urbanscape.

Robocars service a metro station need not travel across town,
go out to suburbs nor go cross country.

Vehicles then can do more than watch out for cars, kids and other obstacles on the running surfaces around them.  They inform themselves by using an array of local points that themselves can communicate back. For example, real-time data on congestion can alter trip itineraries.  Stationary data emitters can also inform congestion managers. These can be small-scale operations such as parking and circulation departments at large university and medical complexes. Alternatively they can be large-scale, sophisticated traffic control centers, such as the New York City region's Transcom, 

Two-Dimensional Robocaricity

The performance and safety of robocars in cities depend not just on the hardware and software within vehicles. They are likewise affected by the extent, complexity and intelligence of the paths, lanes, streets, arterials and interstate infrastructure over which they run. Robocars without roads make no sense.

Why haven’t NHTSA or others categorized the contexts in which robocars are to run? It’s one thing to operate robocars within a private campus, where traffic can be tamed or even eliminated on some segments of the campus and where security and maintenance resources are available. College campuses tend to be pretty not because of intellectual debates and high culture.

It’s a whole different undertaking to run driverless vehicles from Albany to Albuquerque, Boston to Boulder, or Syracuse to San Francisco.

A Matrix to Think Better

Trans.21 proposes the following categories of Robocar Context:

          

            0   Secured and managed campuses

                1   Supervised activity centers with public streets and multiple private owners

                2   Urban neighborhoods and residential or mixed use districts with firm boundaries (physical or policy) and                               populations of 5000 to 50,000 or more

                3   An entire city - central or suburban - but within the jurisdiction of a single legal entity - aka City Hall

                4   A metropolitan area with populations of 0.5-15 or so million residents

                5   Inter-regional - long-distance trips such as mentioned above, extending from sea to shining sea.

Combining these two dimensions, we get the following application matrix:

	Context Scale	0	1	2	3	4	5
Vehicle   Smarts
0
1			A
2
3		B
4						C

In the above robocar-context matrix, Cell A involves driven vehicles that automatically brake in a major activity center -- such as a large shopping district or an airport.

Cell B is a much smarter robocar in which the driver opts over to automation and can regain control operating  within a college campus.  Neither A nor B seems too daunting.

However the challenges in Cell C are significantly more complex and challenging. This is large driverless fleets operating throughout a metropolitan region.  The time for overcoming these problems doesn’t need to block serious discussion and implementations in A and B.

PODCAR AGGLOMERATION BENEFITS

   by         John Avault

I want to point out an aspect of the economic significance that new mobility options can have for Boston and other cities. I see Boston’s strong economy as a force for good, benefiting its residents, businesses and workers.  Greater Boston is an agglomeration of cities, towns and institutions that power a vast array of modern technology.

In Boston’s vibrant economy, space is precious and land use competition is fierce. We need space to live and space to work. We also need means to get from one place to another. Our various transportation systems and infrastructures entail costs as well as benefits. The private automobile provides a high level of convenience and flexibility, but at a very high cost. We see this in the price we pay to own and operate a car in Boston, and in the price we pay to park. There are other dimensions of this cost that are not so obvious. 

Density and porto-potties are going
up in historic downtown Boston

The number of jobs in Boston exceeds the city’s residential population. These jobs pay, on average, significantly more than Massachusetts and USA averages. Boston’s office buildings contain more than 35% of the city’s jobs. These jobs require, on average, less than 250 square feet of building space each. Hospitals contain about 12% of jobs in the city, and they correspond to an average of 211 square feet of building space each.

Stuck on Parking

Compare those numbers to a single parking space in a multi-story garage that requires about 350 square feet of floor area. Seen in this light, the automobile costs us more than just the money we spend. We are paying with very valuable limited land that we really need for jobs and housing. Because buildings and infrastructure are long-lived, we are paying by mortgaging our future.

A technology that both improves transportation access and conserves Boston’s valuable land for more productive uses deserves our serious consideration and our active investigation. PRT (or ATN, automated transit networks) can compete with the private automobile for convenience and access, and steer our land use investments to more productive uses.

Outside Boston's core, the streetscape
can still get cluttered with guideways .

Boston is an exceptional city in many ways. Millions of New Englanders, students and visiting faculty and experts identify with the “Hub of the Universe”. It has extensive but troubled transit services. Podcars will have to fit in delicately -- much as in other cities across the USA and, indeed, the world.

John Avault is a Harvard graduate who spent most of his career as Chief Economist of the Boston Redevelopment Authority. He retired a few years ago and accepts research and consulting assignments. 

PONDERING THE 3D REALITIES OF PRT

On September 24, much of the world was thrilled to hear Pope Frances tell the USA to think globally about the impacts of its greed and wars. The PRT world was also buzzed by a NPR (National Public Radio) report on PRT possibilities with an impressive interview with Mike Lester of Taxi 2000.

Explaining PRT and its potential benefits to the general public will no doubt start many productive conversations from coast to coast and overseas as well. The balanced conclusion of reporter Joe Palca’s story held up a countering view from a Minnesota official: PRT is an idea whose time has come and, with smart cars in smart cities, gone. The main culprit is the cost and offensiveness of elevated guideways, intersections and station.

Elevated, Shmelevated

Elevated guideways were highlighted upfront by Lester as a major plus. They free vehicle movements from the clutter and danger of street traffic. They overcome the friction of space. Passengers ride faster and safer.

  

However, the onset of automated road vehicles is creating new solutions. Much of the promise of PRT is that it satisfies local circulation and connection needs. Future next-gen roborcars will be able to do this without exclusive guideways. 

Fixed infrastructure makes up about 70% of PRT capital -- even with elevated guideways that are cheap compared to LRT.  So removing them from a mobility service plan is a big thing. It changes the business model dramatically.

For longer trips, exclusive guideways are needed, but PRT must walk before it runs. Ten- or twenty-station networks were considered within technological reach by MTI’s study team last year.  Why? Because Vectus in Suncheon and 2getthere in Masdar both have only two stations -- not networks at all, let alone complex ones. Ultra at Heathrow has three. Morgantown has five -- where on-demand scheduling and fleet management start to get a little complex.

The problems, costs and non-financial “externalities” (violations of privacy, noise, droppings, shade, blockage of views, etc.) of elevated guideways are real. PRT promoters do themselves a disfavor to minimize or ignore them.

Think 3D

Presenting PRT infrastructure as elevated and only elevated ignores the fact that Masdar isn’t elevated at all.  Parts of Heathrow and Morgantown are at grade. Most metros and older LRTs move up and down in 3D reality - with underground, at grade and elevated sections.

PRT is no different. Certainly it can and in many places should be elevated, but it can be even cheaper at grade - enhanced by bunker-like earthwork, plantings and smarter and smarter security systems. In pretty neighborhoods where real people live and shop and walk and where buildings are close together, the expense of tunneling may be quite justified.

Guideways have vertical dimensionality.

In the end, the future of PRT will not be decided by the optimality of the gadgetbahn, but by the sensitivities and lifestyle preferences of three-dimensional neighbors and lawyers. 

WE NEED SMARTER INFRASTRUCTURE

As Congress stalls in dealing with funds for crumbling highway and transit infrastructure, a sense of despair comes over the USA. A consensus that transcends Red/White, economic and racial divisions -- that our Federal system has become dysfunctional -- is upon us. Bernie Sanders’s plea for fundamental societal reform resonates in the heart of America. Is he the FDR of the 21^st century?

To move or not to move?

Our transportation planning process suffers. Highway interests fixed in 20^th century thinking control the many stages of project development that put new concrete and asphalt in our cities and towns. There have been modest gains in attention to walking and biking, sharing streets and accommodating app-based sharing. But on the whole, American life centers on parking lots -- despite the congestion, the pollution and the deadly accidents.

New York Large and Small

There are two New Yorks. One is the world city of 8.5 million residents surrounded by suburbs that make for a region of over $15 million. It is huge and bold and brash.

The other is New York State, and it is a vast network of hamlets, towns and cities nestled among majestically green hills and lakes. Here the scale is small. Bridges are designed in ways that obscure rather than enhance pedestrian life.

Upstate but huge in scale, the project underway for a Hudson River-straddling $5.2-billion Tappan Zee Bridge has no distrinct transit elements. Cost studies estimate adding bus lanes would cost $2.9 billion. Adding rail would require $6.7 billion! They were oblivious to ATN options that would add little to structural requirements.

TransitX sees podcars appended to the new Tappan Zee Bridge.

Jpods on the TZB?

An iconic opportunity has been missed under the watch of Cuomo, the Clintons and the host of New York politicians. With designer flare, light guideways could still be woven into superstructure aesthetics.

This is the same valley in which the more progressive NYS Public Consumer Commissioner hopes to make the Hudson the “Silicon Valley of Energy”.

Jpods has a base of operation in Poughkeepsie an hour to the north. Is it too late to fund a river-straddling PRT with networks on both sides of the mighty Hudson?